After such a positive start to the seedlings we began indoors in April, most of them seemed to grow too tall, too fast, and became weak and scraggly, flopping over into dead, or... mostly-dead status. Some of them survived being transplanted, but most of our success is from direct-seeding into these beautiful elevated gardens that Mark built in late spring. The structures are made from cedar, and the outer "wabi-sabi" boards were scrounged from around our neighbourhood on garbage night. Hooray for upcycling and saving things from landfill!
He built them for a number of reasons: to make weeding easier, avoid bunny problems (not that we've really had a problem there), and hopefully alleviate our previous earwig problems (so far, so good)! Unfortunately they haven't stopped our biggest enemy: the squirrel. A perennial problem, this year they're just being malicious and contemptibly obnoxious — rather than an occasional bite out of a zucchini or cucumber, they're going straight to the stalk to take the plant down at it's source. And they seemed truly offended by our potato plants — those were completely and ruthlessly destroyed. And they stole our first (and so far only) tiny watermelon fruit! Jerks! So we've had to cover the gardens with netting, which makes harvesting and weeding tricky, and if the plants grow through the netting, it makes for a rather tangled mess... but at least our veggies don't get eaten.
I've been enjoying picking my daily greens: kale and lettuce salads with fresh dill and/or basil; kale for crackers; kale for smoothies... I find as long as you put in a frozen banana, a bit of maple syrup, an apple, or an orange for sweetness, you can get a lot of greens in a smoothie and still have it be quite palatable. And I generally prefer smoothies over juicing so I get all the fibre and none of the waste/cleanup. Some favourite combos of late:
- kale, cucumber, basil, orange, lime, frozen banana, chia seed, hemp seed, turmeric, cayenne pepper
- kale, celery, carrot, apple, orange, lime, basil, mint, chia seed, hemp seed, ginger
And our grapes are going to be very prolific this year! Last year was the first time since Mark planted them four years earlier that we had any grapes, and we were thrilled to get the four bunches we did. This year there are too many bunches to count! Once they start to ripen and entice the birds, we'll have to net these too — though I do think we'll have enough to share this year!
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| Mark's mad carpentry skills strike again! :) |
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| Dill, basil, kale, peas, YUM! |
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| Look how many bunches of grapes! So exciting! |
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| I find this intrepid bunch hilarious! |
