Transition Time - Spring to Summer in the Garden

Lacinato kale, and every other green thing, goes crazy in the cold frame during April, but by mid-May, it's starting to go to seed and the time has time has arrived to make way for summer crops. The cold frame keeps us in lettuce, spinach, kale, and chard from late January. Soon we'll move the cold frame out and plant this sunny spot with some heat lovers currently incubating in our solarium/greenhouse. Last summer it was peppers Maybe basil this year.

Spring is tricky here in Southern Oregon. Sometimes we think it's arrived in February as temps rise and and shorts are busted out of storage. But then it gets bitter and gloomy and wet again until the next untrustworthy reprieve in March. In April, bluster lingers, but longer days and warmer temps bring out the buds. By May, all heaven breaks loose. The birds, the perfumes of young grasses and blooms, the kisses of warm breezes, the shocking and stunning wildflowers, the trees heavy with color and fragrance—make it really hard and stupid to be in a foul mood. If you can be depressed on a sunny May day, you must be in a dark room without windows. Go outside!

Romaine lettuce and spinach co-mingle as they reach maturity.

Can there be a downside to have all those fresh greens growing on
the sunny south side of our house?

Yes, there is a downside. Most of the greens, especially the spinach,
must be washed and put thru the salad spinner. It is way easier to run to the grocery
 and buy the washed organic greens in the big plastic boxes. Not quite as tasty, of course,
and also not as "substantial." Homegrown greens have more heft, thicker leaves.
I used to blanch and freeze excess greens. Now I use them in smoothies.
I learned just this week that kale can be frozen without blanching! Big news.
We'll have some in the freezer when the strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and
blackberries start spilling off the vines and bushes as early as next month.

The garden is bare, except for some broccoli (not in the photo),
and the just-planted onion starts. The tablet holds our garden
plans. We keep track every year so we don't make the mistake
of planting onions where they were last year, or winter squash
where the hideous squash bugs  created an insect horror show in 2012.

Speaking of onions, we buy them as tiny starts
from a Texas outfit. We ate the last of our keeper onions
in March! Many were softball-sized.

In the meantime, heat-loving plants such as tomatoes, peppers.

eggplants, and basil are practically jumping out of their pots

in the solarium. Even though it's May, we are still likely to

have a hard frost, so we must be patient. And hope we don't get

an infestation of white flies or aphids or some other horrid pest that

loves nothing more than destroying tender young plants. Of course

putting them outside exposes them to the ravages of finches.

It's always something.  The best thing, though, is that it is most definitely spring.

Condolences to my Minnesota sister and friends who saw another five inches of  SNOW

just a few days ago.  May your spinach survive and your kalepush through the drifts. 

Late but great....garden is IN

Early morning sun (yes, sun!) lights up recently planted peppers and tomatoes on the right, and perks up onions and potatoes. Garlic in the forefront, planted in October, will be ready to harvest in June. We've started filling up the trenches with straw, grass clippings, manure, and compost for next year's crops. This is late May Spring has been cold and wet and we're late planting, as are most area gardeners. By "area" I mean the Pacific Northwest. Compared with more northerly locales, we've had it easy. However, temps have been cool and the ground is still wet and we've yet to see beans sprout. Heat-loving zukes and cukes are also reluctant to come out.

We fill in the trenches to keep down weeds and preserve moisture,  then the next season, dig the trenchs and pile the composted material atop the rows. Yes, it's a lot of work.

PK planting one of about 20 pepper plants. In the buckets are organic fertilizer and mycorrhizae, the magic soil enhancement.

The difference between compost and "regular" garden dirt.

In the meantime, fall and winter crops are going nuts. What to do with all that chard and kale? I traded a bunch for rabbit manure, reportedly the best of the manures, gave some to a friend undergoing chemotherapy who is juicing organic veggies and fruits, and we're eating copious amounts in salads and stir fries. A half dozen chard/kale meals are the freezer and form the beginning of the 2011/2012 food stash.

In with the new, out with the old

We think of spring as being all new life, pop-out-of-the soil vegetative wonders. But spring is also the end for some dear friends. Kale, for example. The kale we planted in the fall served us well, and in March and early April it got all pumped up out there in the raised rows despite the dastardly cold and rain and wind and hail. God, I love kale. Not just for how it tastes in stews and stir fries, but for who it is: incredibly tough, sweet, beautiful to look at, and a nutritional powerhouse.
About a month ago, in preparation for spring crops, and in response to the kale plants going into reproductive mode, I advanced upon the kale plot with a sharp knife and a tall kitchen garbage bag and laid waste. The harvest filled the bag.
The kale patch was maybe five feet by two or three feet. A tiny piece of earth, really. But still, after a long winter, we are kale-infused and green-tinged from this small plot, and we also have freezer bags of kale for ..... when? December, January, and into mid-February, the garden dormancy times in Southern Oregon.

Also rousted from the soon-to-be-spring garden was the volunteer red lettuce, which entwined in its bountiful exuberance with weeds to make a colorful patch. A healthy garden is loaded with volunteers, and it's kinda sad to cut em down to make way for the next generation. We always have volunteer lettuce, flowers, dill, and lots more, but end up either routing or relocating them to make way for the new delicacies.  Such as onions. Onions are usually cheap at the grocery store, so why grow them? Too many reasons to list, but just let me say "caramelized." We planted four or five varieties, some sweet with short-storage expectations and others meant for long life in our cool back-porch cupboards.

Onions ready to start the garden game. They always win.

And here are potatoes properly treated and dried for planting. Unfortunately, the day after the onions and potatoes initiated the spring garden, the sky cut loose with more rain, wind, hail and on and on. It pelted the garden for several days with sufficient force to loosen onions and many had to be replanted. As for the potatoes, the potato gods say not to water them until they push through with shoots. They could be rotting out there. We'll see.

Tomato plants surrounded by geraniums, which have been blooming for months. Waiting in the wings. Everybody's itching to go outside.

In the meantime, unseasonably cool and wet weather continues, and in the solarium, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and flowers are getting leggy and impatient and aphid-threatened waiting for their moment in the sun. Spring. It's coming. I know it.