Garden Pretty Pathetic

Inspired from reading blog posts about other people's gardens (see Jowers Inc and Isiik's blog on our 'blogs of interest' sidebar) I decided to do a post about our garden, and on my way to the car this morning I took a few photos. Looking at them, and deciding which photos to post has gotten me a bit depressed. Everything looks weedy and VERY, VERY small. But I also know from past years that mid June is usually the tipping point. Get some sun in late June and everything in the garden takes off. By mid July my garden and Kodiak in general is a GREEN jungle. But in early to mid June a little of the winter brown still persists. Year in and year out the garden always looks small in mid June. (check 'garden' under the Labels section on the sidebar to see views of the garden at different times in years past).

My garden is usually at its peak in late July and then starts to tumble into overgrown lushness in August. I can't keep up with everything and the weeds start to take over and stuff starts to bolt etc. But the good thing about Kodiak is that we also have late falls and we usually continue to eat out of the garden until late October and even into November. Still right now it is early June and my garden looks pitiful.

In my defense about the weediness - I do keep the gardens covered with a light mesh to keep the birds (they love to scratch for worms), cats (use my garden for a litter box), and kids out. And the mesh makes it difficult to weed. Once everything gets established I take the mesh off and start to weed in ernest.

It also looks a bit weedy because i don't like to plant things in neat rows. But broadcast seeds over the whole raised bed to maximize use of space. In the top photo the entire left side of the bed is carrot seedlings and beats with some radishes at the far end and a few leeks on the right. The leeks were too small to harvest last fall and miraculously survived the winter so i replanted them in a row - let's see if they get big or bolt and go to seed.

In the second photo it is all mixed salad greens and mustard on the right and pod peas on the left. For lettuce I just continually thin my bed and harvest the largest lettuces. It keeps on filling in the holes and I am usually still harvesting lettuce into late October. It's so cool here in kodiak that I don't have to worry about it bolting. The third photo is of a few of my potatoes coming up. I use lawn clippings for mulch and will soon mound the potatoes and in so doing eradicate weeds. A lot of the space in my garden is allocated to potatoes and we usually end up with a few coolers full of tubers in the Fall.

Finally the bottom photo is of Stuey and Nora's plants in halibut totes. Radishes, lettuce and thyme and we also have parsley in another halibut tote. Once they eat the radishes I might plant a broccoli or two in a tote. This year is a little different in that I did not plant kale, broccoli or swiss chard like I usually do. But it seems every year we join one of those organic vegetable co ops and always end up awash in kale and swiss chard. So this year I am not planting any swiss chard or kale. Patrick