The camas are blooming! We planted them in an area of the garden with a high water table during winter, hoping that they would thrive where everything else we have tried to grow in that area has failed. Finally, we have succeeded. The camas love their new home.
Springtime Mowing
The first step in preparing the garden for summer planting is a collective effort. We start by mowing the overwintered cover crop. This allows the soil to dry and the cover crop to start decomposing, ready to feed the plants that will soon be coming. We harvested before mowing, which contributed to the garden’s progress.
Swiss Chard
We didn’t mow the chard, but we did harvest it. It is in the walk-in.
Flowering Kale
We didn’t mow the flowering kale because it’s providing a lot of bee food right now. The whole area hums as soon as the weather warms enough for bees to fly.
Pea Shoots
We harvested the pea shoots before mowing. We’ll increase the percentage of peas planted next year and have more pea shoots next spring.
Green Elephant Garlic
The green elephant garlic is looking good. Let us know if/when you would like us to harvest some.
Overwintered Cauliflower
The overwintered cauliflower does not hold long in the field, so we harvested the remainder of the crop. The next cauliflower crop will be from the fall planting.
Spring Lettuce
As you can tell, we are harvesting more lettuce each week. April is prime lettuce growing time. It isn’t too hot yet, and the days are lengthening. We are working hard to provide a continual harvest.
Honey Bees
The warm weather is conducive to honey bee swarms. We walk a fine line in spring as large colonies are more efficient at producing honey. We don’t want the bee colonies to be too large or they swarm despite all our efforts. Swarming is a natural, colony-wide reproduction effort. We go to great lengths to minimize swarms. However, completely eliminating that tendency isn’t easy, so we institute artificial swarms. We also retrieve, if possible, any swarms that do occur. We had that dubious pleasure this week. At least this one did not get away!
Come to the garden to see what other exciting things are happening.
-Anna
