Pretty well, so far! We've been getting a good amount of rain, and I've actually been getting out to the club to tend to things between the rain, and at this point everything's coming up...
no, not roses, but lots of other things. I did what I expect to be the last bit of spring planting today - I needed to do a little boat maintenance to get ready for the Trip Leader Training that I'm assisting TQ with for the next 2 weekends, so since I was heading out anyways and flying light (the maintenance only involved bungees, electrical tape and a small spool of cord) I decided to swing by Dragonetti's and pick up herbs to replace the ones that were wiped out by Sandy. Sage, rosemary and thyme. Hard to believe that giant rosemary bush I used to have grew from a tender little sprig like this!
Baby basil, and plenty of 'em. Last year I tried just doing seedlings and although they did fine I didn't feel like it ever got as lush as they do when I use seeds. Back to seeds this year. I said I didn't expect to do any more spring planting...well, come to think of it I may have lied, with the basil I usually get impatient with how long the little ones are taking and put in a few seedlings to give 'em an example - then they take off and it's pesto, pesto, pesto! And caprese salad (OK, Joe's is gone but I still work across the street from Dean and DeLucca and if I want to go for made-fresh-same-day there might be another place or twelve in NYC where you can get that -- and although I didn't find the curd that simplifies making your own in my visit to Murray's on Friday, I haven't given up on that yet).
Chard's coming up this time - it was weird, last year I just couldn't get these to take off, ended up putting in some pepper plants and calling it a day. Off to a good start this year. Northern Lights, you can already see the colors.
Tomatoes - Rutgers and some sort of beefsteak - Dragonetti's didn't have the fun heirloom variety packs this year so I went with what they had. These guys are just sort of sitting there not doing much right now, I think they'd like it to be a little warmer, but only one of them (not in the picture) is visibly distressed - leaves on that one are quite yellow which could be because of too much water. I'm tempted to replace it with either some funky heirloom, 'cause weird tomatoes are fun, or a Buck's County if the plant sellers at Union Square have those this year, that was the best producer last year. I wasn't forcing tomatoes on friends or anything but there were always two or three ready to pick on each weekend.
Cukes! This was another one I had surprising problems with last year, they got off to a good start, I got a few cukes and then all the sudden the vines just withered with no visible cause. Hope whatever it was isn't lurking to take out this year's crop.
Beets! Haven't done more than a few beets for the last few years but I've got a bunch coming up this year. I'm always tempted to pull up the daffodils and devote that space to beets, daffodils are sort of a waste of space for most of the summer, and I'm usually just about set to pull them out at the end of every season - but then they bloom in the spring and I get all mushy. I did compromise and pull a few out to make more room for beets this year, though.
And, lamb's quarter. This one plants itself. Some people call it a weed but I actually like it steamed like spinach, so although I pulled the ones that are competing with the little guys that are just coming up, I did leave a few in over in the corner with the tomatoes. These tend to be the first pickings from the garden, in fact.
My snake survived Sandy!
Boat maintenance - there was a rear-deck bungee cord that needed to be replaced. I don't really use it but when you're teaching your boat is supposed to be all proper-like. I was actually impressed by one of the clerks at the Eastern Mountain Supply - I asked for deck bungee and he knew immediately that they didn't have it in the selection of cords-by-the-foot where I was expecting it to be, but he thought for a second and then sent me up to the camping section because he knew they had shock cord for tent poles and he suspected that would be the same, and it was. What was more urgent, though, was doing something to save my decklines, which are otherwise in fine shape, from the chafing that the deck compass I got a while back turns out to be causing. So far it's just the cover of the line that's fraying so it's just a matter of adding some layers to give the clip something more to chew on.
First layer, electrical tape -
And then a wrapping of cord because I didn't trust the tape to stay stuck after a few soakings. Looks much better now.
Nice afternoon at the club. Hoping for another good day out there tomorrow -this time hoping to get in my first sail of the season! Woohoo!
4 comments:
Super. Nice to see progress in your garden. Wish I could get some sage seeds - I'll keep hunting. I'll have to do a garden report myself soon.
"Coming up roses" - I can hear Ethel Merman's voice now.... mercy.
Flowers are not a waste of space - though I confess being grumpy over some daffodils that K planted right on the edge of our veggie garden. Every garden around here has some kind of flowers included, if only for placing on family graves. The flowers are there to remind us of the beauty all around us as we work growing things to eat.
Nice repair job on the bungee. Have fun on the water.
The daffodils take up a big piece of space, though, and they're only blooming for such a short time. Although they are awfully pretty when they are.
Now there was a gorgeous cosmos that used to come in every fall, and I loved that - it was a remnant from my first year of gardening when I had a veritable thicket of cosmos, I hadn't realized how big they were, but this one was over on the side and didn't really take any room, and SO pretty. I wonder if that will come up this year or not? More of the garden plants survived the flood than I would have thought - might help things along with a couple of seeds, though.
bonnie - garden is looking good!
out at our new land, we've harvested some wild morel mushrooms (yum!), and transplanted some asparagus from my dad's garden that already sent a few stalks up that we've eaten.
yesterday we planted some cucumbers and sugar snap peas that we had started as seeds in our house. I built a little twine ladder/trellis for them to climb. we have a few more seedlings to plant, but we got rained on and headed back home.
We have lots of people who grow cosmos around here too. Beautiful. K keeps wanting to plant some, but keeps forgetting. Guess we need to write it on the calendar ;)
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