wool & stars

Last week we had some rain (a cou­ple of real thun­der­storms, which are rare around here) fol­lowed by sunny and very warm days — so it wasn’t a real sur­prise to see so much growth in the gar­den. But how exciting!

The cucum­ber tripled in size, so we finally put in stakes with some wire fenc­ing attached to serve as a trel­lis (see photo above on the left.) I also put in two more cucum­ber hills: hope­fully, one each of the lemon and Ori­ent Express that we started from seed. I say “hope­fully” because they weren’t labelled…whoops!

The sec­ond set of basil seeds that I planted have sprouted, and I gath­ered a big bunch of basil from the plants that I bought from the nurs­ery when I gave up on the first set of seeds. Those basil plants are doing very well (pur­ple, cin­na­mon, and gen­ovese) except for the gigantic-leafed basil which has been nearly anni­hi­lated by something–little green cater­pil­lars? Not sure. What­ever it is, it only likes that one type of basil. Any­way, it was quite tasty to have fresh basil with some locally-made Pasta­works ravi­oli for dinner.

Another pest prob­lem has devel­oped: the scourge of aphids in the kale. We’ve used some soap spray, and have removed many infested leaves, but I’m start­ing to feel like just remov­ing the plants com­pletely. We’ve eaten quite a bit of kale, and I’m get­ting kind of tired of it — so maybe I’m being a lit­tle hasty. Hope­fully this week I’ll be able to locate some lady­bugs for sale, and that will take care of the prob­lem. We’ll see.

Some­thing else that’s been going on is a major rasp­berry har­vest. Fan­tas­tic! After a cou­ple of weeks of straw­berry short­cake desserts, now it’s rasp­berry dessert time. Noth­ing fancy needed: rasp­ber­ries, bowl. Bowl optional.

The tomato plants are doing well. I think they’ve grown past the point of con­cern about flea bee­tles, which is great. We’ve installed poles and larger cages for sup­port, and bought some vel­cro ties to secure the vines. These vel­cro ties are amaz­ing.  Here, you must see them:

Another project this week­end was adding wood chips to the paths between the beds. I’m hop­ing this will cut down on weed­ing, and that in the rainy months it will cut down on the mud. It might look a lit­tle fussy, I don’t know. The chips were avail­able for free, and if they don’t work out we’ll just rake them up.

Our garden-neighbor brought her chick­ens to the plot this week. I think she said they are six weeks old. They sure had a blast peck­ing around in the gar­den! We gave them some of our aphid-infested kale, which they munched right up. The video below shows  them in action. Check here for more pho­tos of the chickens–it’s hard not to fall in love. Gideon & I are now plot­ting a way to get our own.