Tag Archives: Kale

April Showers bring HAIL?

The past month hasn’t seen much activity in the garden.  April, true to its history has been wet, wet, wet.  A surprise hail storm lasted long enough to see a rather large pile of hail exit the roof and establish itself in front of our porch.  Its remnants were still there the next morning when I left for work.  Fortunately, the hail was small and didn’t seem to do any damage either to the balcony lettuce or to the spinach seedlings just coming up at the community garden spot.  I’m sure the lettuce was wondering what was going on.

This Just In

Today saw the planting of two varieties of potato, Makah Ozette and Nicola. The latter is a European variety of a lower glycemic potato. I’ve only found ONCE source in the US so far, the Main Potato Lady.  Once again I opted for planting in half buried large nursery pots, 6 in all. I learned about this method from a community gardener in the UK.  Also into the ground went some beet (Cylindrical) and radish (French Breakfast) seed.  Yeah its wet but there wasn’t a lot of disturbing the soil except where the potato pots were ‘planted’.  I think they are happy.

Whats Growing

Broccoli and Chard:

4 starts of each went in the ground near the end of last month.  I wasn’t planning on planting chard but they are so pretty and I was so needing to plant SOMETHING.

Garlic:

Last years two garlic plantings are coming along nicely.  Looks like I have near 100% of what I planted up and ready to start the season.  I gave them a bit of fertilizer last month and with all this rain they should be getting the full benefit.  Bring on the sun.

Kale:

Another overwintered crop.  I planted these from starts late last summer.  We’ve been eating on them for about a month now.  They have started to go to seed but the dog will eat the unopened flower tops so life is good.

Leeks:

The last of the overwintering trio.  A fellow gardener offered up some tiny leek starts last spring.  They ended up getting overshadowed last summer and stayed pretty small.  They come back with a vengeance this year and are almost ready to harvest.

Lettuce:

The old lettuce seed I planted last month did nothing.  Not surprising.  I think the seed was circa 2014.  I picked up some starts from a local garden center and tucked a few starts of the old Amish variety in next to the onions and a few other from a mixed lot into the balcony planter.   I decided to bite the bullet and buy some fresh seed and start those in a plastic container inside.  They are about half ana inch tall now and will be tucked out here and there once things get more settled.

Peas:

My nearly vegetarian dog LOVES snow peas.  We do too but she ends up eating most of them.  I planted half as much as I did last year, a single cardboard trough worth.  The idea was to get them up indoors, grow them out on the balcony to about six inches then plant out.  The scheduled roof redo meant they went into the garden early.  So far so good.

Spinach:

The two varieties of spinach are coming along nicely.  Spinach bolts when the days get to be a certain length so the season tends to be short here as we get long pretty early.  Its a pity, the climate could make for some awesome spinach almost year round.

Mini Greenhouse: Using Roofing Panels to Warm the Soil

Using Fiberglass Roofing Panels to Create a Mini Greenhouse, Extend the Season or Warm the Soil

A few weeks back we had a spell of warmer weather and I waited till the end of it to attempt a sowing of pole beans. A couple weeks after the fact I decided to look for the seed as nothing was coming up. I dug around and found…nothing. The soil didn’t look disturbed so I’m not thinking it was birds. I’m guessing it was just too cool and wet and the seed rotted. When the weather gods predicted another bout of warm weather I was on it. It occurred to me that I could possibly get a jump on sowing if I could warm the soil. Remembering a mini greenhouse I used in gardens past I made a trip to the lumber yard and came home with an 8′ long roofing panel. Once upon a time these used to be made out of fiberglass and perhaps you can still find them but any I’ve found locally have been PVC or ‘polycarbonate’. I’m hoping they will work as well (and last as long) as the fiberglass panels used to. I’ve used them to extend either end of the growing season when just a few degrees can make all the difference. My hope in using them this time is that they will help to warm the soil a few degrees so that the bush beans I plan to plant there will have a better shot at germinating should the weather cool again (a very real possibility around here).

Shopping List

  • 1 clear or semi clear roofing panel. 26″ wide and the length of your choice. Mine was 8′ long
  • 4 1″x2″x16″ stakes per panel
  • length of wire or twine to secure the panel

Preparation and Installation

  1. Cut a 1/4″ notch into each of the stakes, a few inches from the top. This will insure that the wire or twine stays put. I cut my panel into 2 4′ sections but they can also be left whole.
  2. Once you decide where you want your panel to sit, drive two of the stakes into the ground approximately 6-12″ in from each end of one side of the panel.
    Drive two more stakes in 12″ from the first two. If two panels are being installed next to each other you can use 2 less stakes as the middle stakes can secure both panels (see image).
  3. Gently fold the panel into an upside down U shape and set it between the two stakes.
  4. Tie string or wire, crossing over the panels. Thats all there is to it!

Garden Happenings

Harvest

2 large bags filled with lettuce, kale and spinach
The Palco spinach is showing signs that it is about to bolt which necessitated harvesting that 1′ wide bed. Since I wanted the space on either side of it I decided to harvest one of the beds of the Mild Mesclun mix that was ready. I also harvested the rest of the red and butter lettuce from the bed next to the peas. I ended up with two large bags of green goodness, one filled with lettuce and the other with spinach and kale. Way more than we will ever eat I decided to fill some 1 gallon bags for the local food bank. I ended up getting 8 1 gallon bags in total. 3 spinach, 2 kale and 4 lettuce. 8 to go to Helpline and 1 bag of spinach for us.

Sowing

It may be too warm but I sowed two short rows of Renee’s Farmer’s Market Blend lettuce in the shade of the peas.

On the balcony I started a pot of SMR-58 cukes, Astia zucchini and another attempt at “Italian Pesto basil. ALL of the batch I started inside this spring ended up dying. Not sure if it was a rot or ? Need to investigate that.