As I posted back in May, we dutifully did the labor to put the beginnings of the Summer Garden in place:
And, despite the cold spring and rainy early summer, the sun has caused some serious growth in our front yard:
We even have baby tomatoes:
And more baby tomatoes (but plums!):
And we’ve even got our own first Megabloom:
In short, Summer, and all of its tomato (and friends) glory, is fast approaching. I can hardly wait to share it with people!
As a gardener and tomato lover, my favorite garden season is when we get to watch and enjoy the fruits of the Summer garden.
Over the last few weekends, we’ve removed the remnants of the Spring/Winter garden, amended the beds, turned the soil, added an entirely new raised bed (thanks to the husband for the manual labor on that one), rejiggered the watering system, and transplanted and seeded for the Summer’s bounty.
The final result?
That’s 29 varieties of tomatoes, 4 hot peppers, 5 eggplants, 10 or so okra plants, 1 butternut squash, 3 cucumbers, 1 yellow crook-neck squash, leeks, shallots, garlic, and nasturtiums, and borage to bring the bees. We’re also trying our hand at some lettuces grown in the shade — typically, it’s too hot and they go to seed, but we can always keep experimenting.
The majority of the seeds we planted sprouted (except the yellow squash, so I bought some seedlings at the nursery and will be putting those in today). One new addition that we’re growing from seed is red okra. Historically, we’ve grown green okra, and loved it. But this year it will be growing side by side along its red cousin:
Right now, they are almost impossible to tell apart, but at some point, they will be quite different.
And finally, we have our aging herb box (that really needs a thorough re-do) and 5 varieties of basil (which will be hilariously overgrown in a month or so):
I wasn’t particularly scientific or orderly about my spring crops.
It shows:
Those snow peas?
Gold.
Should have planted more — every two weeks, I harvest fresh peas, peel the strings, chop ’em and put ’em in the fridge in wet paper towels. They stay fresh and crisp for Thai curry, stir-fry, soup, and whatever else I decide to use them for, for weeks.
Those fava beans?
Who knew? The plants grew to be taller than me. I just harvested my first batch of at least 2 pounds tonight and I’ve got a couple more to come. I planted them because a) they fix ambient nitrogen into the soil and b) while E thinks they are too much work because they have to be peeled twice, I get nostalgic about Italy when confronted with big, full, ripe, Fava Pods. The actual food that can be used and gratuitous references to The Silence of the Lambs are a bonus.
The leeks, of course, are always worth it. But the carrots:
I should have planted earlier. Smarter. Around where the tomato seedlings would be going, perhaps. Instead, I had to harvest entirely too many tiny carrots to prepare the beds for amending and the addition of the tomato seedlings. Too much effort for too little food, but I’m much too proud to admit defeat. So here we are:
Ahhh… hindsight. At least the french chefs consider the baby vegetables a delicacy. It’s so rare that I have the opportunity to cook a delicacy on accident…
For a winter/spring harvest recipe delight making use of the baby carrots: visit Biting Tongue.
J.I.T.
On Demand.
The Cloud.
In the garden, this philosophy looks like medium sized tomato plants that have not yet been put into the ground despite a date in April in a temperate region of California. Sure, given how close we are to the bay and our average last frost date, we could have planted our tomatoes. We could be fully committed, and done with the major physical labor of amending the beds and putting in the plants.
But, the recent rains and cold weather have made me quite glad that we exercised some caution. We refrained and waited to plant — so we’ve been taking the plants out into the sun when it’s nice and taking them into the garage to protect them when it’s too cold, or too wet (like today).
As a result of waiting until the last possible moment to be irrevocably committed to the ground and exposure to the elements, we will experience less loss and will have the freedom to optimize where appropriate.
Yet another garden analogy that works for startups.
About 7 weeks ago, I sowed the seeds of entirely too many tomatoes.
Some sprouted much earlier than the predicted germination time, and I found myself caring for spindly, tall, weak-stemmed seedlings.
Others died due to my lack of properly allocating resources to water them while I was on vacation.
Today, after hours of potting up over the last couple of weeks, I am left with 362 tomato seedlings in various stages of maturity:
Tonight, we moved them to the garage to keep them out of the coming storm for the next few days.
If I am lucky, I will end up with at least one healthy plant of each of the varieties that we can plant for ourselves in our garden, and a couple hundred for gifts to friends and acquaintances and distribution to strangers to market Tech Law Garden.
Yet again, gardening shows me that it is an excellent metaphor for technology startups. You have to invest a ton in hopes of future rewards. Even if you think you know what you are doing, there is great attrition. There are unexpected obstacles. And, when things are good, the growth is much faster than you expected, which can be an obstacle to success in and of itself.
Please shoot me an email or give me a call if you’d like a tomato seedling or three.
The rains have brought prolific propagation in the garden.
The problem being, of course, that many of the big plants that took over in the absence of our discipline are weeds, or overly mature plants with nothing to offer but removal of nutrients from the soil. Sure, many of them are flowering pollinators (yay local bees!), but, if we are honest, they are weeds all the same.
This weekend, we spent much time culling. It was unpleasant and a task we put off for entirely too long, which made it even more difficult than it should have been. But now, after getting rid of the things that had been growing without a plan, we have room to put in the summer plants and enjoy bountiful harvests.
This post, of course, is a metaphor for my start-up companies. I’ll avoid the overly precise analysis, because experience has taught me that this is one of those lessons, whether in the garden, or a seedling company, that must be learned first hand.
Here’s to culling when you need to, new beginnings, and the celebrations of spring!
This winter’s garden includes broccoli, lime-colored cauliflower, onions, leeks, garlic, shallots, arugula, bok choy, tatsoi, mustard greens, spinach, fava beans, and probably a few more I’ve forgotten.
But, by far, the winner of the visual stunner award is the Romanesco (aka “fractal broccoli”).
A perfect baby specimen looks like this:
And, a less perfect, more adult specimen that literally spiraled out of control, looks like this:
There is math in nature. Make no mistake about it.
And. Bonus. It’s delicious.
The time has come to start harvesting the winter garden. We’ve had delicious broccoli and cauliflower treats, some great leafy greens, and I (well, technically, my husband) finally managed to dig out the world’s largest carrot:
Much like my fledgling law firm, the seeds for the summer garden are germinating away:
Supposedly tomatoes take 7-10 days to germinate. Unfortunately, I didn’t check ’em ’til day 5, and found that we’ve got overachievers this year, where 45% had germinated early and left us with tall spindly sprouts searching for the sun (aka the lights I quickly turned on the timer). I hope I didn’t create weeklings that won’t be able to stand up under their own weight, but if so, the good thing about planting entirely too many is that even if I’m left with half I’ll still have over 500.
After searching, and cleaning the flats, and preparing the cells, here we finally are for this year’s experiment. A full day of work leads us to this, just ready to be put on the heat mat for germination:
That’s:
All snug as a bug in a rug, on heat mats, waiting for germination and ready for the lights and fans:
Remnants of the Summer Garden
Early this week, I had a cold. So, quite reasonably, brother banned me from visiting. Instead, once I felt better but still had the sniffles, I started to transition the summer garden to the winter garden (while sneezing — have I mentioned I’m allergic to dust? Yeah… gardening makes perfect sense…).
Due to the end of the tomato plants, we have green tomatoes that didn’t quite ripen. We selected 2 pounds of the biggest firmest beauties for deep fried slices sometime this week. So, now, we’re just trying to figure out what to do with the rest. We are evaluating between Arvay’s Chow-Chow, or our friend S’s aunt’s pickled green tomatoes, or dilled green tomatoes, but we certainly have enough:
Tonight, after a day at the hospital with bro, I let off some steam (literally) by canning okra pickles, green tomato pickles, cucumber pickles (3 different styles), eggplant pickles, tomato sauce, and just good old-fashioned skinned tomatoes (sorted by color). So far, we are pleased with the results:
And finally, in “oh-happy-day” news, we have lots of sprouts in our flat from the winter gardening class at Love Apple Farm:
Other than that, I must admit, there is very little to report.