The spring vegetable garden

This year I plan to pay a little more attention to the backyard vegetable garden. This is where my cool season crops grow, as well as those that can use a little protection from summer sun. That translates mostly to greens, although actually the sun-loving perennial herbs do perfectly well here: oregano, thyme, marjoram, sage, rosemary.

We've put up a small fence for a part of the garden, just to ensure there will be at least one rabbit-free zone. Here I'm growing some kale, snow peas, bok choy, and broccoli raab. And volunteer potato plants are coming up! These must be from the remnants of former not so successful attempts to grow potatoes.

We've also discovered that the lettuce we've been growing indoors and that has been harvested several times can be revitalized by being planted out. Those raggedy looking plants have perked up and are ready to be harvested again.

Another surprise is the multiplier onions. These I started from seeds from historic Bartram's Garden several years ago. These perennial onions do indeed multiply. They don't really seem to form bulbs, but look more like giant green onions. I think perhaps I should have been harvesting these right along, as they are quite strong flavored, though if you use the smaller ones, or the part closest to the tip on the larger ones, they are pretty good for both salads and cooking.

A small innovation this year is a new style of trellis - something a little different from the basic tepee. I based it on a design I saw in a book, and hope to have a crop of beautiful sweet peas vining up. I'm hoping the rabbits have so many other succulent treats around the yard that they won't notice until the peas vines are thick and tough enough to be unappealing.

From seed to seedlings

Since my last post many of the seeds have become seedlings. On the tiny side: the rosemary and lavender. On the towering side (relatively speaking) the okra, now about 5 inches tall. And most amazing, each of the dwarf pea plants has a single white flower bud. What do they think they're doing?! Are they going to produce pea pods that are bigger than the plants themselves?

                    












Jan. 17 - Okra (foreground), Cilantro  (back left), Basil (back right)

Jan. 28 - Okra; Peas

The vegetable garden: winding down

I grew scarlet runner beans for the first time this year, and only a couple of plants survived the repeated nipping by rabbits. Fortunately, the survivors made a beautiful display earlier in the season, with lovely flame-colored flowers. 


I had read someplace that scarlet runner beans are edible, but the large fuzzy pods didn't look that appetizing, and I didn't have enough to make it worth drying them just to get a handful of dried beans. Then I  read a Barbara Damrosh article in the Washington Post  about cooking beans, including scarlet runner beans, fresh from the pod. She claimed that fresh shell beans, as they are called, are a treat, and she was right. Once you pry the pods open, the beans inside are a  stunning bright pink, mottled with purple-blue. I cooked them until they they were white with a touch of blue remaining - about half an hour.  I had just enough for a bit of lunch, delicious with a little butter, salt, and pepper.

Right beside the scarlet runner bean is an enormous plant which I assumed must be a sunflower planted by the birds at the nearby feeder. If so, it never bloomed. Not enough sun? Or not a sunflower? I have no idea. I'll cut it down soon.

Elsewhere in the yard, the kale plants that I set out a month or so ago are doing reasonably well. The peas, unfortunately, have mostly succumbed to the rabbits. I kept row cover on them for quite a long time, but finally took it off. Now only some little nubby plants remain. I rejoice that I don't have a deer problem, and in the past was glad that the rabbits were quite well-behaved, only nibbling a bit of this or that, and not systematically taking out entire crops, as they have done this year. Of course, it's possible squirrels have been the culprits - they delight in destruction just for the sheer sport of it. Their usually modus operandi is to dig things up and just leave them lying about, however, and most of my stuff appears to have been chomped.