use your imagination, will ya?

Okay, this isn't some diatribe about how we need to flex that imagination muscle, it's mostly just that I've left my pocket digital camera at the office all weekend, so have no pics from either garden.

So, I'll just have to describe things:
(I'll try to ignore the collective groan of all 4 of our dedicated readers!)

Backyard:
The salad greens I'd harvested prior to leaving on vacation had replicated themselves with astonishing speed. This is a reminder to me to go ahead and snip/snip/snip at those greens while they are what the marketing folk call "baby greens". When I think of that term, I just CAN'T snip at them, but really, I should because they just regrow right back again, likity-split! It's as if it's what they were MEANT to do! Oh wait.... it is.

Community Garden:
The 3 experimental tomatoes are looking fine and healthy, but still no flowers. I caged the largest of them, and will have to individually cage the others, too, eventually. I had hoped to use only one wiry cone structure, and so had planted the 3 in a close ring, but now I see the error of my ways. I may need to space these out further, but right now real estate is pretty prime.

The summer squash plants are erupting into their volcanic selves. Already they cover 9sf of ground (each!) but like the tomatoes, I'm not seeing any blossoms. My assigned plot is at the southwestern end of the Garden, which means I'm right up against a 2-story house next door. My plot doesn't get direct sun until late morning (unlike the plots that are out of the house-shadow, which soak up the rays all day long!) but it gets a decent amount most of the afternoon. Only trouble is that a typical SF summer afternoon involves a bone-chilling late afternoon wind that sucks in the 'ocean effect' of a dense fog blanket. Dense. Fog. Blanket. There is a reason Kris and I call this the 'Fog Belt Tomato Challenge'!

Onions (started last fall, and transplanted twice since, once I started understanding the sun/shade pattern of my plot) are now reaching their full bulbous potential! They are absolutely GORGEOUS, and the leeks are not far behind. They have shot up tall central shoots, with a tight bud at the pinnacle - do onions flower? I'm leaving them be for the time, to see if they do!

I've got 9 red beets that are now about the size of radishes, and 9 more from seed that I just moved from the CG greenhouse to the plot. This is a first time for me (along with the tomatoes) so I'm not sure of what to expect (although now I have a better idea!). I already had to re-seat most of them deeper into the ground, to make sure the beet root was fully submerged, to keep it from drying out from exposure. I'm so excited about these, but it will also stab me in the heart when I finally harvest them and devour them all in one batch, because I love me some roasted beet salad with goat cheese. I hear the beet greens are super nutritious, too, so they will be applied as a chiffonade garnish over the beet salad, sauteed with a little broth and onion, and served as a luscious bed for seared porkchops!

Beans along the boundary fence are doing okay - I didn't get over to water them in the past week, so they had to kinda tough it out, which is reflected in their (lack of) growth. I gotta get better at working in some mid-week waterings.

Rotation
I'm starting to get more savvy about a rotation of seed starts. As much of what I'm growing is for the long haul (beets, onions, chard), those I need to get in the ground early. The regrowth plants (about 4 varieties of salad greens) I can enjoy for 2-3 cycles each, so I need to get better at spacing those out. My personal challenge is going to be my prize product: broccoli rabe. I had a bumper crop that peaked just before we left on vacation (mid-May) but the cut shoots didn't resprout, so I need to start a new batch from seed. I'm figuring out that I need about six plants maturing at any time to meet my desired consumption, which means starting new seedlings every couple of weeks. Which is hard to do, with my schedule. Meaning, I'm pretty lazy.

Okay, so no pics from the past couple week, but hopefully some from the coming week, which if temperatures hold as they have, I'll need at least a couple of stops at the CG to water mid-week.

Hydration:
Also coming up? My Trials and Tribulations At Installing A Soaker Hose Watering System. It's still in rough draft, and I'm looking for a publisher (har har). Okay, I'm really just going to bore you with the gory details of my trial and error method. It's ALMOST all worked out now, but so far? still watering with the can....

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