Garden - Early May

We've had very little rain over the last month which is pretty typical for this time of year - at least over the last few years.  We're watering fairly regularly, though, so things are growing well.  I prefer to water the garden by hand, directing it right at the roots of the plant. It saves water, but it also keeps down weeds since the area around the plants is getting so little. This week, though, I put on the sprinkler for the first time and watered the browning front lawn and the garden together.  If I were going to live here longer, I would just plow up the rest of the yard. Who needs grass when you could have more strawberries?

Everything's thriving at this point. The corn is beginning to form cobs, the branching sunflowers have buds, and we've harvested our first two cherry tomatoes this week (Gracie ate them before they made it inside).  We've also been harvesting some delicious broccoli.  My little experiment over winter yielded this result: It is better to replace frost-damaged broccoli with new transplants than to cut back the damaged ones.  The frost-bitten ones never produced much and went to seed quickly.  The new ones have started yielding normal-sized and delicious broccoli stalks.

Earlier in the week we pulled up the remaining collards which were beginning to bolt and planted green beans in their place since they stand up to the hot weather farily well.  We also harvested the rest of the sorrel and composted the bolted lettuce plants, leaving just one cilantro in that plot to continue going to (coriander) seed.  Grace and her friend, Halle, planted sunflower seeds there which were given to us by my neigbor.

It's been a beautiful spring so far, perfect weather for being in the garden. Click on the photo below for a larger view (with labels).