*~May Food Growing Mamas Thread!!!~* - Page 2

[SweetSilver]

Our garden, which I call the Welcome Garden, is in Zone 7 in the oak prairies of the South Puget Sound (near Olympia, WA, but away from the water which makes a big difference in what overwinters and planting times).

The good: (yaaaay!)  

     Rhubarb is growing like mad this year; last year's heavy harvest didn't hurt it one bit.  I give credit to the "chicken-y hay".  (The old girls aren't laying eggs, but they eat the weeds and make loads of poop.)  Overwintered kale is blooming brightly and still giving a respectable harvest.  Self-sown kale is about two inches high.  Seeds (chard, arugula, planted a bit late because of our dreary, cold spring) are finally sprouting.  Broccoli starts taking off.  Need to buy more.  Peas outgrowing yearly weevil damage and ready for staking.  "Tri-star" strawberries bloooming madly.  (Am I really supposed to pinch off the first blossoms of day-neutral SBs?  What a bore!  I quit!)  No sign yet of the caterpillar eggs that defoliate the currants.  Dandelions are setting seed, pleasing the little birdies, and the chickens, too, as I start to weed the dandelions out of all the beds (I toss all non-toxic culls into the chicken coop).  The quince tree is in full leaf and bloom.  So pretty!  I'll learn how to post pictures one day.  We receive compliments year-round for this tree.

The bad and the ugly:

     The late, cold spring really set things back, and i am resisting buying tomato starts until the night time temps improve.  Beans and pumpkin seeds will be planted in June.  Should I even waste the space on pumpkins this year?  Peach leaf curl has decimated our stone fruit trees.  We don't spray, and this annual event is particularly devastating this spring.  Corn is off the list for planting, as allergies took it off the menu

We are enjoying rhubarb sauce with biscuits and in yogurt, though i eagerly await a more leisurely day to make rhubarb pie.  No strawberries; I like my rhubarb pie straight up, no ice cream, if you don't mind!

Thanks, RosieL, for the info on blogging, I will follow your advice.

[lunita1]

Cathy, I'm in sac... Do you remember a comment way back in like 2008 on your suburbia blog by someone who recognized you at barnes and noble? That was me....

[jessaries]

I'll try to get pics this week. I told B that you guys wanted to see pics and he was all, "I have to weed behind it if you're taking pictures". He took a machete to the worst weeds tonight while I got a good wet layer of newspaper down around the plants. (I'll add mulch on top of the paper in the morning, I ran out of daylight.) 

I'm finally having some luck with some of the bigger heirloom tomatoes this year. I have Old German and another one (I can't remember variety, rutgers? homestead? something?) ripening up! This is exciting, it takes like 100 wild tomatoes to get to the size of one of these big ones.  

I like the idea of making a plain tomato paste and flavoring it up as needed, thanks! 

[RosieL]

Lola, one of my two American Bulldogs, ate my strawberries last year. For a while I had assumed it was birds or squirrels or some other such wild creature. But I finally caught her stealing all the pinkest fruit. This year I promised myself I would be vigilant...she wouldn't go near them (I don't want to fence them because they're in a container on the deck). I was true to my promise...and was patiently waiting for this one to ripen...one more day...

I looked up from my weeding yesterday to see my OTHER dog, Sage, licking his lips next to the container.  He ate the two ripe berries, first of the season!!! He plucked them off so daintily that the stem and the base of the flower are intact, just the fruit is gone. 

The culprit is on the right. He fooled me into think he had been sleeping soundly on the deck. 

Table update:

Member	Zone	Site	Favorite cultivar of the moment
Farmer Cathy		Blog
lunita1	9	Blog
RosieL	7	Garden Log	Ever-bearing strawberries!
Magpie1972		Blog
HeatherAtHome	4	Blog
SweetSilver	7

Don't know your zone? Look here: http://www.gardenweb.com/zones/zip.cgi

[Owen'nZoe]

I am jealous of those strawberries, even if the pup did get them! We are just starting to get little green berries right now. Your puppies are adorable, by the way! One of my parents' dogs loves rasperries, and it is funny to see how absolutely dainty they can be, as you said. She picks them off so very carefully, and leaves the entire stem behind, too!

I'm in zone 4, so while the garden is mostly in, we still aren't harvesting a whole lot. So far, we've been enjoying the perennial veggies - sorrel, linden tree leaves, walking onions, garlic (does that count as a veggie? I have a perennial patch that just keeps coming back, so this time of year, I'm thinning out the plants that are too close, and we're eating the whole young plants. We've also been enjoying having fresh herbs again. Just this weekend, I started harvesting radishes and a few leaves of lettuce for sandwiches. We're still in the part of spring when the kids are fighting over who gets the radishes out of the garden; give me a couple weeks, and I won't be able to beg anyone to eat them. ;) The snap peas are almost a foot high, which is encouraging, and I'm hoping to have some baby turnips to harvest it time to make my favorite pasta/turnip/cranberry salad for memorial day.

[SweetSilver]

Our unusual garden pests are the Golden Crown Sparrows that migrate through each winter/ early spring.  They eat our garden sorrel, primrose leaves, they even devour dandelions down to skeletons.  If I leave the soil unmulched or with a fine mulch, they scratch the soil until it is barren (Sparrow tractor!) Forget sowing any new seeds until the are gone.  Then one day, the garden seems eerie and still.  Finally, they are gone.   

[Magpie1972]

I am in Zone 9, BTW.

I love that your dog is eating strawberries! Wait, I mean BAD doggie... but that's really sweet. I had no idea dogs liked them.

My cilantro is growing like a weed. The center stalk is about the size of my thumb. It's disconcerting since the parsley looks exactly the same as when I planted it. Grow, please! Otherwise it's a waiting game, still, around here.

[Magpie1972]

Update on the garden: I had to prune my garden in a painful way. I had a mystery squash (which had grown to show itself to be zucchini) that was taking over, along will improperly planting lima beans and bush beans. I planted seeds en masse instead of waiting for sprouts. I had to prune the ever-lovin' snot out of the tomatoes, they were so full, but I tied them off and they are all pretty and full of fruit ready to turn red in who knows how long. I got a "Congratulations on your garden. Momma" from the babes... they were truly impressed with the fruits of our labor I have many peppers peeking through, too, and herbs galore.

Anyone know if flowering cilantro is bitter like basil that flowers?

Any updates on your gardens?

[SweetSilver]

The flavor does change a little, but I've never noticed it to be bitter.  I've always continued to use it, even when flowering (aren't the flowers gorgeous?)  I'm pretty sensitive to bitter flavors.  However, plants can have dramatically different flavors from garden to garden, from year to year.