Springing Out Of The Ground

The plants, I mean.

After years of growing radishes every March, then giving up when they either split or become entirely gnawed on by woodbugs, I think I might just be getting the hang of these things. Sow thinly in a cool place, pick when still relatively small, take a lot of photographs of them (glistening with water), then consume.

 Some might call this a trendy repurposing of old greenhouse shelves, but the truth is that these are the lengths I have to go to to keep the cat from repurposing my salad garden as a toilet. These shelves stay on until the seedlings are tall enough to discourage even the LAZIEST cat from scratching around in them. Worth their weight in gold, them shelves is.





Lettuce seedlings (Plato II, Valmaine, Esmeralda), bulb onions (grocery store cheapies), radishes (Cherry Belle), baby turnips (Mikado), beets (Golden), and kale (Dwarf Blue Curled).










Celeriac seedlings getting settled. I was listening to Local Garden Persona Carolyn Herriot this spring, at a Seedy Saturday lecture, when she showed a photo of celeriac plants. They were positively bulbous, so I asked her what she did to get them so big.

"Those overwintered," she said. "They take more than one year here."

Ah. So that's it. Why doesn't it say that on any of my seed packets then?

 It's almost strawberry time!

 It's definitely asparagus time.

 This, folks, is what I have to work with in my back yard. No flat open stretches for me. No, no, no. It's all one big slanting sloping Machu Pichu of a garden.

Finally, Snapping Dragons, reclining in the sun.