One of the most fantastic things about a garden this time of year is watching the near hourly growth of all the plants. For me, it is so rewarding to see all the hard work of the previous fall, winter and spring coming to fruition. It is a time for me to slow down and let nature take over and do her thing.
Our raised beds are looking good. Here is a shot of the most luxurious of the five with Russian Red Kale, Dino Kale, Broccoli and Tatsoi which was really prolific and is already bolting.
A couple of weeks ago Kevin drilled a ton of holes into the bottom of a metal trough we are now using as our potato bin. We planted Yellow Finn potatoes just a couple of weeks ago and now every time the greens get a little bit high we are alternately covering them with compost and a kind of sawdusty mix from our compost pile. Soon we will have the trough filled with dirt to the rim and then in the fall the whole thing (hopefully) will be brimming with potatoes. Mmmmm, I can just taste them now.
This crazy beauty is one of the Alium Shuberti that I planted last fall. I first fell in love with these giant firework-like alium when I ran across some growing on the biodynamic flower farm where I picked the flowers for my Mother and Stepfather's wedding six or seven years ago. I ended up using them in a center piece and ever since I have needed to put them in my garden. They are just so unbelievably fantasticle! Plus they dry really well, my dear friend Annie Cooper had the brilliant idea of hanging one upside down in her kitchen and it looks like a crazy mid-century design light fixture.
I planted some other alium which I can't remember the name of but look super cool grouped together. I am disappointed by the foliage of these alium though. Very wimpy. I think I need to plant some bushy things around their base so that next year the flowers can poke up through the leaves of the other plants. I think that will look so lush and whimsical!
We are also nearly done with the fence project. All that's left is to put the cross pieces on the top of the arbor so our hops can have some support when they get crazy big. We scrounged a ton of reed screen from the alleyway behind the Hanger Cafe in our neighborhood. It's amazing the stuff we find in the alleys while we are walking Ruby, in a way she has ended up saving us money! Anyway, the reeds probably aren't the final solution but they will do for a couple of years and in the meantime we don't have to deal with deciding what we want to do. The boards for the gate we also scrounged from the alley and I made Husband drill cute holes in each picket.
To keep the chickens in the back yard we also needed a fence on the other side of the house. We had a bunch of pear tree prunings from the spring and some branches from other various tree trimming projects so I decided to make a twine and twig fence and gate. Preety rustic but it gets the job done. I still have to figure out how to get hinges onto it though. Also, I want to get some clematis to grow up over the archway.
Polly and Pickles are no longer babies although we still refer to them as "the little peepers." We have finally integrated them with the older girls and so far everyone is getting along peacefully. Pickles likes to push the boundaries of older hens patience but they put her in her place pretty quickly. Ruby is doing good too! She loves to bark at anything that passes by our front fence and chase any squirrel or small bird that comes in our yard, which will come in handy once our squash plants get fruit.
The bed in the front of the house looks great too. I still want it to be fuller and more luxurious but I will just have to be patient and keep fertilizing. Some of the plants in here I have been carting around with me for years. From one rental to the other, I just couldn't leave them behind! I promised them that when we bought this house it would be the last time they would have to move, and I think they're happy.
