Radishes in the Sky - An exposé

We tried a new way of growing radishes here at the community garden, one that you may not yet be familiar with. Most of our radishes got harvested in the normal way, but we saved about 5 or 6 plants to go to flower. Here’s the bed in bloom in early July:

Along all of those stems, the flowers are giving way to juicy radish pods. About half the size of a pea-pod, they have a really nice, juicy, mildly radishy taste. Some varieties of radish have been bred to be grown like this - one well-known one is called “Rat Tail”, which may explain why these pods have been slow to catch on - but any radish will do. Close-up of the pods:

They’re great fresh from the garden, in salads, or in a stir fry, and a great way to get a second crop out of your radish bed without any extra planting or work. Genius!

Lettuce - give thanks

We’ve gotten months of tasty greens from our lettuce patch, more than we could have hoped for. The time has come, though, when their biology has caught up with them, and they are reaching for the sky:

Bolting happens - we’re cool with it. About half of the lettuce has bolted or is about to, so we pulled most of it and added it to the donations for the food bank. Along with a huge bag of swiss chard, loads of broccoli leaves, baby Bull’s Blood Beet greens, carrots, and peas, we brought 28 pounds of produce to Good Cheer this week. More pics of the harvest:

Some tasty young chard ripe for the taking

This guy isn’t ready yet, but he’s well on the way in these zucchini days of summer

Artsy sage-and-carrots shot - we thinned the carrots for the last time this week and now they’re growing away to their full size

Our total donation

And now a look inside the greenhouse. The tomatos are growing bushily - I strung them up two weeks ago to give them some more space:

All of those cords are attached to the ceiling - this is a less extreme form of the stringing technique that Hanna at This Garden is Illegal demonstrated here in her blog. There may very well be some fruits lurking in that mass of foliage already, but these cherry tomatos at the far end of the greenhouse are what i’ve found so far:

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One more thing, this about saving seed.  We want to teach all aspects of gardening to the kids and community members we work with, and a big part of that process is saving your seed from year to year.  If a particular crop grows especially well in your garden, it only makes sense to keep the seeds and plant it again and again.  There are bigger issues playing into this as well, probably beyond the scope of this blog, but preserving the genetic diversity of seed crops and the freedom of exchange are crucial concepts being threatened by large companies and their policies (watch the documentary The World According to Monsanto for a wake-up call to the importance of these issues - I highly recommend it).  By saving our seeds, we keep everything local and increase our connection with what we grow.

For us, the mizuna was a fantastic crop this year, and also the first to go through a complete cycle - it all bolted by mid-May.  We left two of the best-looking plants to flower and produce seeds.  To keep them from being mistakenly pulled out and to contain them, we tied them to a large stake as we wait for the seed pods to dry:

Another benefit: the yellow flowers have attracted lots of bees to our garden.  Once these seed pods have dried, we’ll collect them, pop out the seeds, and store them for next year.

Squash invasion: imminent

That’s right: attached to this beautiful, innocent-looking Romanesco squash flower is the first in a legion of zucchini that will soon overwhelm our fair garden.  At least we hope so.  Thankfully we have a cadre of volunteers from the community to help us take care of the garden now that school is out.  Zucchini equates to summer in my mind, and I’ve personally had experiences with the things running wild and growing to the size of caveman-clubs, but these ones will be better tended, i’m sure.  Incidentally, Romanesco squash are often praised as the most delicious of all squash - who knew?

The peas are growing very nicely, too - We should have our first harvest next week - a bit later than we would’ve liked due to rabbits and possibly the weather, but a pea is a pea.  Two out of the five kinds we planted are producing pods presently; once the others kick in we’ll have ourselves a taste test.

This is Vicki Robin, one of our harvesters for this first week on the summer schedule.  She and Nancy Snow grabbed six bags of lettuce, some broccoli and cabbage thinnings, and beet greens (ours are purple and delicious, from our Bull’s Blood Beets) for the food bank.

One last picture of the garden, from the inside looking towards the gate.  On the left is our swiss chard, beyond that the newly planted carrots under a row cover.  On the right, the billowing mass is actually a horde of broccoli - I snuck a look underneath today and found that several of them have set their flowers.  Beyond them are onions, then in the distance are the cabbages, more broccoli, and some peas crawling up the fence.  The hoophouse and our big manure pile are beyond all that.  Next time i’ll get some pictures of all our tomatos in the hoophouse and talk about the technique we used to support them.

Some catching up to do

The blog has been semi-dormant for the past two weeks, while the garden has been entering into some crazy growth patterns.  This week saw our first harvest by community members, our 10th weekly harvest overall, and much else - all will be revealed after i get through what’s gone on the past couple weeks.

Harvest from June 4th, and Alex and Marcus, who harvested it:

If those carrots look pretty lame, they were - the first thinnings from our carrot row.  We planted them as thickly as possible and are slowly spacing them out as they grow.  This week we got some fairly nice-sized ones, but three weeks ago they were in their infancy.

Two weeks later, the last of the radishes came out.  And I also harvested six bags of lettuce - this was our 5th week harvesting lettuce from what we planted, using the same ultra-thick planting technique.  They should still be producing for a couple weeks!

Summer Housekeeping

School gets out on Wednesday here in South Whidbey. It was a great first school year for us here at the garden, and we hope to get even more student involvement next year. Now comes the hard part: gardens and schools are a little incompatible, in that when the garden needs the most attention, the school is sitting empty for the summer.

We’re putting together a summer schedule of students, community members, and anyone interested in helping water and harvest from June to September. We’ve had a lot of success already and have filled in many of the weeks; if you feel able to help, check out the schedule at the link in the sidebar (or here) and see when you can help. E-mail Micah at the address listed to be added to the list! Note that we can use up to three harvesters per week to make the process go faster.

Thanks as always to everyone for their support! So as not to post two pictureless entries in a row, here’s what the garden looked like at one of our last Wednesday work parties (we’re enjoying Anza’s bread):

Veggie tales and laundry lists

To go along with our fantastic new garden map (see it here), here’s a list of everything we’ve planted to date by month with the varieties:

March

Peas – Sugar Star, Sugar Sprint, Sugar Pod II

April

Peas – Oregon Giant, Alaska Early Bush

Onions – Mars Red (storage)

Carrots

Lettuce – Mesher, Romaine

Mizuna

Broccoli

Cabbage – Derby Day

Mustard - India

Pak choi

Radishes

May

Carrots – Bolero Hybrid, Royal Chantenay, Danvers Half Long

Swiss chard

Squash – Hubbard, Crookneck, Romanesque

Pumpkins – Jack B Little

Beets – Bull’s Blood

Tomatos – Legend, Sweet Baby Girl, Celebrity, Big beef

Peppers – California Wonder, Hungarian Hot

Melons - Earlidew

June

Cucumbers – Green Slam

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Since the summer can be an uncertain time at school gardens, Anza chose to plant crops that aren’t too demanding at harvest time - no beans or zucchini in here. The proliferation of peas was purposefully planned for a pea taste-test; a horde of rabbits have kept that from happening yet.

A few of our most successful crops are growing from seeds provided by the wonderful people at the Organic Seed Alliance, located across the inlet in Port Townsend. Through their World Seed Fund, they donate seeds for nonprofit groups tailored to our area’s climate, with a focus on heirloom varieties. The Mesher lettuce we got from them looks amazing and has been growing strong for over a month.