I don’t know about you, but I often forget just how fast lettuce grows. I find myself starting to ration picking it… and then I realize that lettuce is pretty much kudzu; it just keeps growing. And there’s always more of it than you think. Or something…
I have enough successions of greens to last a good long time. Each night now we can easily have a salad that’s got this much in it:
In the rest of the garden, everything is in. The peas are going like crazy and the garlic will be ready in a month or so. Beans are sprouting (sooner than I imagined). Everything looks healthy, but I do have ants and something that seems to be tunneling… never a good sign.
Grab yourself some shade and get to it. Plant some lettuces. Spinach. Greens. Lots of ‘em. Get going! Spring is sproinged and summer is coming with weird sun angles and days full of day all built to make your lettuce bolt. Good lord! It’s hot! Time to throw up some seeds and call it a day. No, no.. I must be going. Go on without me.. remember me frondly. Tell carrot that I love her.
I will be picking lettuce probably through July, but it will get iffy. Some varieties bolt less easily, but lettuce is one of those crops that’s best to get an early jump on and plant in staggered weeks. Today I planted more spinach and more head lettuce along with a bit of mustard.
Nothing could be easier. Here’s a handy video from the Podchef showing just how unfussy lettuce (and radishes, scallions, herbs) can be about planting. The compost on top trick is a great one and something that I do. Lettuce typically needs a bit of sun to germinate so you don’t want to cover it up completely and a sprinkling of compost does the trick.
A repeating effort to chronicle the odder search terms people use to find my silly little blog.
Today’s search term: Pole been eatable
I can clear this up right now. There are lots of people who have been going around saying that, indeed, the pole been eatable in the past. It has caused many of us to follow that supposition to its obvious conclusion that the pole is also eatable now. After all, if it’s been eatable what would have caused it to no longer be eatable? Nobody knows for sure.
The truth is that there are only a few who actually know which pole it was and/or is. There are more poles in the world than you may realize. Telephone poles, stripper poles, barber shop poles, people from Poland. Incidentally, we surely do know that skewed polls from Fox news are eatable and that they taste like the flayed skin of children. Scrumptuous if you are of that leaning, bitter otherwise.
Before you go eatabling every telephone pole that you see or sampling stripper poles (a very bad idea) you should settle into what is truly known. The best poles that been eatable are small and taste like mint.
Seriously. How do they know to grab on to stuff? It’s freaky. Plants vs. Zombies? The plants win.
The peas are going great. Of the 80 or so plants I’ve got going, there are only 3 runty little runtlings. Pretty soon they’ll hit their full height and we’ll get some beautiful flowers – especially from the Carouby.
The rest of the garden is going well. With the beans now in, only the peppers and cucumbers remain.
In the meantime, here’s the guard dog and emasculating cat watching over the earthbox peas.
Just about all chance of frost has passed here in Connecticut. It could happen, but it’s not very likely. Overnight temperatures can still be a bit cold in the 40s, but the soil is still warm enough to get my beans in. Here are the quick tips:
Wait for soil temperature to be 55 to 65 F.
Use row covers to keep the cold and bugs off.
For pole beans, build yourself a simple teepee with twine for trellising.
Plant beans about 1 inch deep.
For pole beans, use 3 or 4 around each pole.
For bush beans, plant 4 inches apart in rows 10 inches apart.
Sprinkle some inoculant in furows or in the seed holes. (Or soak the beans in a slurry.)
Bush beans are smaller varieties (Jade, Provider, Bountiful) that won’t climb and climb like their rangier brothers the pole beans. Pole beans (Kentucky Wonder, Rattlesnake) will grow quite tall and will need something to climb. I use teepees.
In this year’s garden I’ve got three teepees with several plants for each. For the bush beans, I’ve got 4 rows so far and I’ll plant others next weekend to stagger the yields a bit.
Each year I lay out the garden plan in meticulous (in my own wholly-unmeticulous way) detail. And I stick to it.
But I really enjoy the reality of the garden space as opposed to the griddish limitations of excel. In real life, cell b17 can actually hold some plants and I didn’t account for it in excel. What this means is that around the edges, within the nooks and crannies, I just start sticking in plants and seeds.
I find that greens can go pretty much anywhere until the heat really starts. Peas shoot up straight and do good things for the soil. Raddishes will go anywhere.
And today was some random broccoli planting.
Kyle is a good kid who really likes to see what’s going on in the garden. We’ll be planting his peppers later, but today he was very happy to help with the broccoli.
Are those the roots Daddy?
Yeah. That’s them.
What do they do?
What do you think?
Umm.. they hold it up. And drink water.
Yeah that’s pretty much true.
But the dirt makes it grow, right?
Yeah that’s true too.
Now we’ll see if both Daddy and Kyle will eat the broccoli when it’s up.
Well this was us last weekend at my mom’s birthday. It was about 90.
And this weekend it is cool (about 60) and rainy. It was definitely time for me to get more lettuces and spinach planted. The peas are doing very well (and I added a few trellises) and are about 80 strong. I’m hoping for more peas than can be consumed. Beets, carrots, arugula, mustard, radishes, onions, and garlic are so far all in. Shortly it will be time for broccoli.
I don’t like to do heavy transplanting when it’s this wet. The forecast calls for rain pretty much through the next seven days. Not a problem to do some direct sowing, but I’ll hold off on plopping in any larger starts for a bit.
Here it is today. Note the cool, gray, rainy yuck.
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth, how love burns through the putting in the seed. On through the watching for that early birth when, just as the soil tarnishes with weed, the sturdy seedling with arched body comes shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs. -Robert Frost
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