Two months ago today, I began a journey. I switched from daily reading to daily writing. My goal was a novel I’d enjoy creating as much as reading. It was thrilling to find my voice. Some days I’ve bogged down; others, I’ve soared. I don’t pause for fear I won’t begin again. One hundred fourteen pages and twenty-six chapters later, I’m still excited about my story. The characters are familiar, and I care about them. It’s an ensemble cast, with four narrators alternating scenes and viewpoints. I’m discovering their personalities, so they don’t feel like clones. They always surprise me.
Year two in my vegetable garden is starting with cool weather crops. The abundant rain we have had along with mild temperatures has encouraged my leafy vegetables and root crops to get rolling. Yesterday I thinned the radishes, snow peas and early corn plants. Two kinds of potatoes, red and gold, have come up, and are looking very healthy.
I have decided to use the method with the potatoes in which you mound straw around the plants as they grow, so it is easier to harvest the spuds. I hope that the cilantro I planted in between the rows of potatoes will not get buried beneath all that straw!
Here we are, approaching the middle of spring. The days are getting longer and warmer, and the veggie seeds you planted have sprouted and are beginning to look like real plants! While you wait patiently for your garden to mature, it’s nice to have some perennial herbs from the previous year that you can enjoy in early spring.
Today I planted Cilantro, whose seeds are known as Coriander. Thus annual herb has many benefits in the vegetable garden. It does well with tomatoes, basil, spinach, and dill. It attracts beneficial insects such as tachinid flies, parasitoid wasps, and hover floes. It discourages harmful insects such as aphids and potato beetles. Cilantro does well next to nitrogen-fixing plants such as peas and beans. Other annuals I have planted or will plant this year are dill and basil. These herbs are important additions to your vegetable garden.
On a recent field trip for my UC CA Naturalist class, I was able to obtain several cuttings of a white fig. I rooted them in water, but after some investigating I discovered that the cool weather may be impeding the development of roots. I gave the process another week, and finally one of the stems developed root buds. I transplanted it to potting soil and put it outside in the garden. A week of warmer temperatures later, root buds formed on the other two stems, and I planted them as well. Apparently the roots formed in water are fragile, so it is important to plant the cuttings in soil as soon as the roots begin to form.
Happy Easter! Today I remembered that I hadn’t planted the first batch of seeds in my garden, which I had hoped to do a couple of weeks ago. It has rained so much lately that the soil has been too soggy to get much of a start. So I planted the majority of spring crops in the garden today, just ahead of another storm. The timing was almost perfect.
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