Almost a year

It was almost one year ago that I first walked through our cottage garden. We looked, we drooled and dreamed before walking out and thinking this couldn't be ours. It was the first home we toured on our house hunt in Sonoma.

Bed D : chard, calendula, peppers, red shiso, beets, bachelor buttons and corepsis.

Little did we know months later the cottage was still on the market. It seemed to be waiting for us. This is what the garden looked like on one of those first walk throughs. In need of some love but the bones were there.

Cottage garden in summer 2011

And here's how it looks now. The paths have been mulched, the beds have been planted and we're working on a seating area in the middle of the garden.

It doesn't look like much of a difference but tilling and adding compost to sixteen beds was  a slow task. And we finally reap the rewards. This was just a smidgen of last week's harvest: plums, strawberries, tomatoes, beets and basil.

And now comes phase two, the rebuilding of the sixteen raised beds. It will likely take a few years as some beds are still holding together well. Next weekend these four small beds will be pulled out and replaced with two 4'x6' beds that will be lined with gopher wire.

This weekend I pulled up all the remaining beets to make way for the first of the new beds. All of these grew in the space of two square feet. How's that for square foot gardening success? I canned two pounds (which wasn't much of this pile) and passed along the rest to friends.

There's always planting to do. I'm gearing up for the fall harvest by sowing radishes, daikons and carrot seeds. I'm now sold on 'cloud cover', the miracle cloth.

Daikon radish seedlings with carrots and onions surrounding.

Hopefully come winter, I'll have lots of our own daikon to use in the Japanese soups we make during the cold months.

April in the Garden

It's been two weeks since I last saw the garden and a lot has happened since then. The harvest is growing! Three baskets worth this week.

Green onions, oregano, thyme, asparagus, parsley, snap peas, chives.

Chard!

Spinach

Besides the weeds taking over even more of the beds (one more week until the gardener's mulch the paths, I can't wait), my seeds have taken off.

Merlo Nero Spinach seedlings.

Those peas I planted back in the fall are growing tall and we're able to enjoy some snap peas off the vine. Next year, I will plant lots more snaps.

There are even tiny little figs growing on the fig tree.

This month is when the rest of the planting happens: pole beans, melons, tomatoes, peppers, and all those flowers to encourage beneficials into the garden. There are lots more pics of the new growth on my flikr site here.

March in the garden

We have been coming up Saturday mornings lately. I try to already have everything I need to make dinner so the only shopping I have to do is in the garden. This week I was able to harvest my usual pile of chard and the first spinach and lettuce leaves to make a side salad.

The weather has been so mild these past few weeks we've been taking afternoon bike rides throughout Sonoma. A few blocks away from the cottage we have this view to enjoy. There's a wonderful spot nearby to set out our picnic blanket which we plan to do a lot of this year.

Back in the garden, things are turning green, especially the weeds in between the beds. I'm debating what to do about the surrounding paths.

On the one hand, if you follow the concepts around permaculture, this is a vital part of the garden, providing shelter for good bugs (but also bad). The downside is the paths are uneven, you have to hand trim the paths because of the irrigation lines, and it just doesn't look very tidy to me.

I'm looking into mulching the paths, not sure if I'll go forward with it. In the meantime, I'm slowly removing an old straw bale bed to make way for a seating area with a fire pit between the beds.

In the midst of all these thoughts, though, the plants are growing well. Radishes sprouted last week, the snap peas have their first flowers and my flowers seeds (nigella) are growing fast.