A Fine Spring Day

Hello sour grass, my old friend! Welcome back again. Here you are with one, lone, bright-faced bloom lighting up a neglected corner of the yard. Can spring be far behind?

It was such a splendid, dirt-under the fingernails day I ended up spending the whole morning in the garden. The usual inspection tour -- lately just a quick look around our damp, cold, scraggly, uninviting backyard patch -- turned into a flower photo op.

The first oxalis blossom opened nearly a month earlier than last year -- mid-January as opposed to the week of February 10. (One of the great features of a garden blog is the gradual accumulation of exact data from year to year.) Spring does seem to be running early. There are golden fields of wild mustard blooming already out by the coast and our neighborhood is sporting the first gorgeous tulip magnolias.






The volunteer arugula has put forth its trademark four-petaled blossom, delicately veined like the wings of some kind of exotic helicopter insect. I've seen the hummingbirds buzzing these blooms.






Here is borage -- not a very good photo. I'm sure it looks at lot better than this to the bees who gather here.






The pea plants are blooming again, unfurling like the Japanese folded paper flowers that "bloom" when you put them in water.






More flower origami: elegant black-trimmed fava bean blossoms are opening on three-foot tall stalks.






These hot pink rosettes aren't flowers at all, just some garden art that resulted from the thinning out of an overgrown clump of volunteer chard. Lots of the leaves had been so thoroughly mined by leaf miners that they had rotted into slime during the rainy spells. Yuk!

Undaunted, and energized by the unexpected spring day (I know, I know, it won't last), I weeded and trimmed until the plants could breath and soak up the sun. The lipstick chard pictured above is growing back from a venerable gnarled stump, all that's left of a plant that grew six or seven feet tall last season.






There are several varieties of chard in the patch, some growing from over-wintered stumps, some springing up for the first time.






Here's a shot of the north half of the winter garden. The oxalis and the borage are in the back corner where the fences meet; the arugula is to their right, the peas are in the foreground twining up the wooden stakes, the favas and the patch of chard are out of view to the right. In the foreground you can also see spinach, lacinato kale, and a bed of sponsored arugula. In the background are a couple of beds of lettuce. Out of view are broccoli and leeks. The paths are covered mostly with miner's lettuce. And that's about it.

We are harvesting lettuce, miner's lettuce, spinach, arugula, kale, and chard. We are waiting for broccoli, leeks, another round of peas, and favas.

Ready to pick or not, edible or not, everything looks beautiful on this fine spring day.

New Year's Eve Tomatoes

At the closing of the year we are still putting tomatoes in the nightly salads: just a few to make them last as long as possible. Of course, in dark December they don't have the rich flavors of August, yet somehow the minimal spark they provide pulls together the lettuce, spinach, and arugula into a unified burst of flavor.

The hanging vines out in the garage are picked over and bedraggled, so this won't be going on much longer. It's been a good run.

Beets, Spinach, and Peas: A Confession

Despite repeated attempts, I've never gotten a good crop of beets or spinach or peas -- noble vegetables all, which I hold in the highest esteem and like to eat in all manner of dishes. (Does any California restaurant that doesn't serve roasted beet salad with arugula and goat cheese really deserve it's business license?) I keep trying to grow these three because the boutique samples I've been able to produce are a delicious incentive.

Above is this season's entire crop of chioggia beets, harvested this morning. Only a couple have the rounded shape you expect in a real beet, the rest look like hot pink horseradishes. I wasn't scrupulous about thinning the seedlings when they sprouted last fall, and no doubt it was simply too crowded in the old wicker laundry basket that served as a planter. The greens look gorgeous, though, and shouldn't go to waste.




The spinach is going to seed and is looking lusher than it did at any point since being planted out last fall. I think this is the Gigante de Invierno, not the Bloomsdale. The California poppies have taken over the planting bed.

Throughout the winter months and until just recently there were enough spindly little plants to supply leaves for adding to salads, but nothing that would count as a real crop. I read in the San Francisco Chronicle that spinach just doesn't size up in the San Francisco area, so maybe that's the problem. The recommendation was to plant the large leaf varieties -- and it's true that the Gigante did better than the Bloomsdale.




These Caseload Shelling Peas were planted as seeds on March 19th, and represent the most promising set of pea seedlings so far, but were probably planted too late in the season. About half managed to make it to this stage. I think the rest got chomped because there are some tell-tale green stubs. Some of the ones that made it show signs of damping off: thin brown stems at the soil line.

Last fall I planted out two entire packets of two different varieties of shelling peas and NOTHING came up.

Sigh.

Survey of the Winter Garden

Rain, rain go away. Oh well, I can't go out and play in the mud so I might as well use the time to record for posterity the winter garden of 2009 - 2010. These photos are from January 22, a couple of weeks ago. The plants look pretty much the same now.

None of the winter plantings grew as fulsomely as I had pictured in my imagination last fall. Perhaps I got them out too late (October), or perhaps they are just biding their time for a spring surge. At any rate, they have kept us in salads and winter greens all through the dark months.

Pictured above is a bed of Dinosaur and Redbor kale, slug-tattered but productive. We've also been getting nice kale from volunteers around the yard, Siberian and Curly Blue, I think. I was
given some seedlings a few years ago and now they come up on their own.




Romanesco broccoli (from nursery starts), which has been growing very slowly and has not yet formed heads. Around the edges of the bed are little cilantro plants (from gathered seed). Although still small, the leaves have spiced up many a salad.



The purple sprouting broccoli (nursery starts) also has not produced anything yet but broad gray-green leaves. Quite successful as an ornamental.



Sparse looking spinach patch (Bloomsdale and Gigante d'Inverno, from purchased seed). Every now and again I can pick a leaf from each plant to fill out a salad, but so far there is not enough to cook with. The California poppies are starting to grow here and could easily take over this bed.



Assorted chard (from gathered seed). The back row includes plants from last year that just kept going, re-sprouting from the base that died back in the summer.



Rainbow chard (nursery starts) surrounded by parsley that just keeps going from last season.



Assorted lettuce (from purchased and gathered seed), including a volunteer Black Seeded Simpson seedling that I moved here from one of the paths where it had sprung up. In front is some red chard that just won't quit.



Forellenschluss lettuce (from purchased seed).



Black Seeded Simpson lettuce (from gathered seed).



Bronze Arrowhead and Red Lollo Antago lettuce, ravaged by slugs but still producing a lot for eating -- eating by people, that is.

These beds have been in continuous use, summer and winter. It may be that I need to re-examine my soil building program to make sure they have enough fertility to sustain so much growing.