I am passionate about vegetables.
I mean fruit is good too. But vegetables? Just amazing to plant, eat, harvest, and repeat. And preserve the excess, of course.
Overall, it’s the vegetable garden in general occupying most of my thoughts right now. What needs to be started? Sown directly? Covered? Transplanted? Fertilized? It could be a full time job growing food for just my family, let alone for others.
But our nourishment should not be an afterthought. It SHOULD be taking up space in our brain, I think. We should be putting our hands to what we can do ourselves. Whatever that looks like for us. If we don’t exercise the knowledge passed down about growing our own food, it gets lost. And from there, the loss spirals into poor health, dependence on a profit driven system, and disconnection.
However in 1456, the average family member only lived until they were forty six years old simply due to being worked to death to growing or hunting enough food to stay alive. Um hello, can we get some balance?
There is a limit to how hard we should work to achieve some sustainability for our own nourishment in twenty first century. It’s not necessarily to the death but it’s also not complete dependence on Walmart and 3 D printed food either.
I just read “Cloud Cuckoo Land “ by Anthony Doerr. It has a complicated cast of characters and is a heavy fiction read about agricultural history, the passing down of knowledge, climate change, AI, but overall was such a message of hope to me about people eventually choosing the real world and being good stewards here over computer generated perfection. I needed that reminder with the barrage of “Musk”, “Gates” , and climate change related news coming our way these days. People growing their own food and being happy doing it is the light I need to focus on.
As I have wrote before I garden a lot on instinct. I have learned a lot from others but deep down there is a kind of generational wisdom passed down in my DNA, for which I am eternally grateful. My instincts tell me it’s colder and slower this year than last. Trees are later budding out. My soil samples tell me it’s drier. You’d never know that from my high tunnel though. Ugh, I’m still waiting on a drain to be dug so for now I am very strategic in my plantings. Water loving vegetables are doing lovely in there. And the slugs are just thriving. Doing my part to ensure their survival for sure.
Here’s what’s planted so far on this cold wet windy island. We are still weeks away from our last frost date but here it’s the wind that gets you.
Perimeter : apple trees, quince, currants, pear trees, raspberries, rhubarb, heirloom crabapples, walnut tree (was two but one got whippersnippered).
Cold frame: spinach, broccoli starts, 4 season lettuce (I plant that everywhere), mesclun
Kitchen garden:
Garlic ( red, music, German)
Mint, spearmint, peppermint
Chives
Lemon balm
Ecineachea
Onions (red, yellow storage, bunching, perennial)
Beets (golden, cylinder, Detroit red)
Leaf lettuce
Spinach
Carrots (Nantes, red danvers)
Fava Beans
Turnip (early white, purple prince )
Kale (I don’t love it but you can’t kill it)
Sweet peas (royal mix)
Dill
Mesclun
Asparagus
Swiss chard
Tatsoi
Red rapids lettuce
Sugar snap peas, shelling peas
Broccoli
Celery
Cauliflower
Cabbage
Potatoes (red Norland, Irish cobbler, fingerlings)
Radishes (cherry belle, long Icicle)
Pak choi
Oregano
Lavendar
Ground cherries
Small greenhouse:
Spring peas
Broccoli rabe
Broccoli
Spinach
Sage
Parsley
Swiss chard
White Tokyo turnips
Spinach
Grand Rapids lettuce
Seaside spinach
4 seasons lettuce
Kale
Cucumbers
Potato patch (new) :
Yukon gold
Russets
Fingerlings
High tunnel (first spring)
Fava beans
Yellow and green beans
Spinach
Lettuces
Radishes
Cabbage
Potatoes (grow bags)
Tomatoes (trial)
Thyme
Calendula
Seedlings waiting till last frost:
Cabbages (Katrina)
Sweet potatoes
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Zucchini
Lettuces
Basil
Peppers
It goes without saying I will have tons of pollinator loving flowers planted everywhere. We have already seen such an uptake in species over the last ten years of slowly expanding the gardens to increase our sufficiency.
We are zone 6b as I have mentioned before so I usually direct sow winter and summer squash , cucumbers, bush , pole, dried and yellow beans outside in early June. Peppers, eggplants, tomatoes and basil get transplanted undercover around the same time. After thirty years I have learned some of these lessons the hard way, and not by instinct at all.
Just pure old fashioned failure. The best teacher of all.
Happy growing !
Love Jenn xx
Ps .Some more random spring garden pictures:
