Garden Nymphs

My friend Raina is "that friend," the friend that each of us has at least one of, the friend who has an incredible garden.  The garden that, if you weren't so proud of your friend, you'd be extremely jealous of.  A recent evening when Raina had a few of us over for dinner, us girls went out to take a look at the finale of her veggies.  As we discovered, the veggies were still going strong in late September.  The tomatoes were almost shoulder high, and hid tons of little, red ripe ones under her skirts; the cucumbers yielded almost five massive fruits; and the chard just wouldn't quit-- Raina said she was harvesting it for the fifth time that season.  There were carrots too-- cute, crisp ones, and as you can probably see in the background of some of the shots, Raina's nasturtium is aspiring to a mountainous size.  Berkeley (curly hair) and I were so excited by the bounty and thrilled by Raina's (blue tank top) handiwork, we decided to have an impromptu photo shoot.  Here we are rolling around in the garden, picking veggies, eating them straight from the vine, and just all around loving and relishing the fact that you can grow what you eat.  Astonishing.

The Ugly Duckling Vegetable Garden

Well, here she is: possibly the least attractive garden you've ever laid eyes on.  A couple weekends ago Adam and I rented a roto-tiller and turned our wasteland into workable soil.  Unfortunately, while the soil was being tilled just about every single weed seed in town got wind of the fresh, aerated soil and flew over and dove right in.  I can't get grass to grow on my lawn for example, but it sure loves the veggie patch!  The hideous cardboard is covering the pathway as well as some spots that are as yet unplanted.  I'm hoping this will keep weeds at bay, and will create a nice dark, moist, welcoming spot for worms (they'll eat the soil and weeds and from their back ends will emerge nutrient-rich "black gold" that the veggies next spring will love.)
We've had some success so far-- my roommate Christie, a refugee from another house in Hood River that burned down recently, brought over as many plants as she could salvage.  This basil is looking good.
Also, she brought about ten broccoli plants, and they seem to be flourishing.  Her tomato and pepper plants are small, but alive.  We'll see about those.  The watermelons, sniff, are no longer with us. 
These broad-leafed sproutlings are squash-- I planted Waltham winter squash and Butternut.  Of the seeds, these came up the quickest, largest, and most robust.
As for my carrots, chard, and kale, I'm worried about this weed.  What IS this stuff???  It's too tiny to pluck and I'm afraid that I'm going to wake up one morning and these things will be chest high and my little veggies will be dead in infancy.  Any tips from you green thumbers out there?  Note, the chard does seem to be emerging-- I did clear the areas around them as best I could.

The Coldest Summer I Ever Spent

There are rumors that it's going to get up to eighty degrees this weekend here in Portland, and I'll believe it when I see it.  The past weeks don't bode well, that's for sure.  Here it is, mid-June, and the other night I had to turn on the heater!  Rain, fog, and wind like you would not believe are blustering over our town, and I am sick to death of it.  The weather page in our local paper at least is having a sense of humor about it.  One of their headlines on Tuesday read, "Merry Christmas!  At least that's what it felt like in La Grande."  

I was getting a bit worried for my vegetable garden-- is it getting enough sun?  Too much water?  Too cold?  So I decided to do a little investigative reporting, and I called up Terry at Kasch's Nursery on Tacoma St. to see what she had to say.  A short, blond woman with a deep, husky voice, Adam and I have seen her the last two springs that we visited Kasch's to pick up our tomato starts and flower seeds.  She's always charging around, watering plants and just generally getting stuff done.

I was hoping she would answer the phone, and she did.  The hook I was looking for didn't really pan out, though.  Apparently, plants are doing just fine in this weather.  For the most part, at least.  Terri told me genially that some people who started planting their spring veggie plots really early had to come back and replace some of their plants.  But for those of us who procrastinated till late May, or early June (or haven't even really started yet), there should be no problem.

I could see the truth of her words in my own plot, but I had just been chalking that up to the compost bin that Adam made last winter and which we positioned right in the corner of the plot so it would, we hoped, leach nutrients to its green, growing neighbors.  We've got tomatoes, corn, beans, lettuce, basil, cilantro, an eggplant, and a zucchini going strong, and the only thing that didn't seem to take was the okra (which, truth be told, was just fine by me).

Well, I guess I don't need to worry about waking up one wet morning to a plot full of dead veggies.  I suppose the little guys don't mind the rain nearly as much as I do.