This afternoon as I was walking up to the garden, I noticed from a couple hundred feet away a flash of red in the flower border. I was a away from the garden for barely two days and while I was gone this happened:

The hot pink one in the back is a Shirley Double Poppy, and I think the red-orange one is an Icelandic Poppy.

Here’s another Shirley. I love how the petals look like they’ve been dip-dyed.

Here’s another look at the Icelandic poppy. I just can’t get over that neon color.

And this is the first of my little California Mission Bells. Last year these sweet little poppies bloomed all summer. They come in all sorts of colors. Last year I sowed a few different kinds of poppies, but only the California poppies came up, so I’m really excited to have a few big ones this year.

The shasta daisies have been blooming for about two weeks now.

The bachelor’s buttons are just getting started. I don’t remember them being quite so bright blue last year.

The chives have been blooming all month. I love those little pom-poms!

These little Johnny Jump Ups came with the new plot.

I think pea blossoms are my favorite vegetable flower. My sugar snaps and shelling peas have white blossoms.

But the blue-podded soup peas have these pretty magenta blossoms.

I spent a week in San Francisco and it seems summer arrived while I was gone. When I got back yesterday I hardly recognized the place. We had a few rainy days and some hot and sunny days, and then a little more rain, and everything really took off. The picture up top was taken just before I left. I took the next one when I got home yesterday. Everything has just about doubled in size.

These peas in the front beds are nearly waist high!

The ones in the next bed aren’t nearly so tall, and they never will be. But they’re covered in pretty little white flowers. We’ll be eating peas really, really soon!

When I left none of the beans had sprouted yet, but now they’ve all popped up out of the ground.

Last week the shasta daisies were just starting to open. Now they are in full bloom.

The poppies are going to bloom any day now. . .

The chard is getting big, despite the critters that have been nibbling.

The kale and arugula are growing, but the flea beetles aren’t leaving much for me.

I inherited the gardening gene from my mom’s side of the family. Back when Queens was still the country my maternal grandfather’s family grew vegetables there while the city grew up around them. My mom never really grew vegetables, but her flower arrangements won many a ribbon in the local garden club’s flower shows. She had a big herb garden in one corner of the backyard that was a little wild and overgrown. I spent a lot of time in that garden as a kid, picking big handfuls of spearmint and chives, and plucking honeysuckle flowers off the vines that grew along the back fence.

When I started planning my garden last spring, I knew I had to have an herb garden. I laid out a two-foot wide border along one side of the plot and planted chives, bee balm, borage, lemon balm, lamb’s ear, sage, thyme, marjoram, lovage, dill, chervil, parsley, and basil. There’s still quite a bit of room in the bed, so over the weekend I picked up a few more plants. Sunday morning I planted peppermint, pineapple mint, and ginger mint, all in a big pot so that they don’t take over the whole garden, as well as some garlic chives, lavender, and lemon verbena.

My parents moved to an apartment a few years ago and the old herb garden has no doubt been replaced with grass by the house’s new owners, but my mom is still gardening on their little balcony. When I talk to my mom on the phone we inevitably end up talking about kale, so for Mother’s Day I sent her a few packets of seeds. I don’t know how interested she really is in growing vegetables on her little balcony, but she’s going to humor me and give it a try.

Well, our makeshift seedling heat mat worked perfectly. It stayed consistently warm without ever overheating, and just about all of the seeds sprouted within a week. Pretty good, especially for peppers, which can be very difficult to germinate.

And then after that nothing happened. Our little seedlings stayed pretty much the same size for weeks. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was, until it dawned on me. The growing medium I had used was no good. Last year I started a lot of my seeds in coconut coir. They got off to a slow start too, but they did fine once they had been transplanted, so I didn’t give it much thought. This year I started my first couple rounds of seeds in an organic seed starting soil mix and they did great. But then I ran out of it, so I decided to just use the coconut coir I had leftover from last year for the tomatoes and peppers.

I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this out, but I finally realized that the reason the tomatoes and peppers weren’t growing was that the coconut coir doesn’t provide any nutrients. So last week I repotted everything in slightly larger containers with some really good organic potting soil. Within a day they were noticeably bigger. It was pretty amazing.

I moved these seedlings to the cold frame a couple weeks ago, but since then the maple trees in my yard have gotten their leaves, so the cold frame was suddenly only getting afternoon sun. On top of that we had some cool rainy weather, and the spot where the cold frame just wasn’t drying out. The seedlings needed a warmer, sunnier home quick. So Friday we moved the cold frame over to the community garden. We dug out a little sloped trench and set the cold frame in it to maximize the sun exposure inside.

My seedlings seem quite happy in there now, and they are really starting to grow. They are still pretty tiny, but they’ll catch up quick. I just keep reminding myself of what one of my garden neighbors said last spring when it was cold and rainy and everything was getting off to a slow start– eventually everything catches up.

Well friends, the first of May is upon us and the garden is now in full swing. We had a beautiful, though windy, weekend and I spent most of Saturday and a few hours on Sunday working in the garden. Saturday was Spring Clean-Up day at the community garden, when the tool shed is cleaned out, the lawn mowers are tuned up, and the hoses are installed. Clean-Up Day is also the day when a couple of local farmers bring truckloads of bagged compost and bales of straw for gardeners to purchase.

I bought two bags of compost, two bales of straw, and a bag of chopped straw mulch. I put down a thick layer of straw over the paths between the beds to help keep the weeds down. Over the course of the summer the straw breaks down, and in the fall what’s left of it will be raked on to the beds to mulch over-wintering crops and to add more organic matter to the soil. I like to used the chopped straw to mulch within the beds. Since it’s finely textured it doesn’t get in the way of my little seedlings trying to push through the soil. It helps the soil retain moisture, and eventually breaks down and enriches the soil.

This year I’ve taken on a second garden plot. When I first learned about the community garden I thought the 20 x 20 foot plots sounded enormous, but it didn’t take long for me to start thinking about what I’d do with a second plot. While the first plot is an orderly grid of nine 4 x 4 beds, we’re going to let the second plot grow a little more wild. The plan is to plant tomatoes and tomatillos along the two outside edges, and grow pole beans on a teepee in one corner. We’re going to plant a few kinds of melons and winter squash in the middle and just let them take over. I was a bit overwhelmed by the all weeds in the new plot, but Saturday we made great progress. We pulled up all the weeds, put up our bean teepee, and prepared a bed for the tomatoes. It’s nearly ready for the plants, which will go in at the end of May.

On Sunday I spent a few hours sneaking a few more rows of radishes into the beds wherever I could find room for them. I noticed that the spinach and tat soi are about to bolt, so I sowed some more of those, and I started another round of lettuce too. When I was all finished with my sowing and watering, I harvested radishes, spinach, pea shoots, and chives. At this stage when so many of the seedlings are so tiny, it can be hard to imagine that they’re ever going to grow. But each week there’s a little bit more to harvest, and it won’t be long before I’m bypassing the the produce section all together. A very nice feeling indeed.

The weather was chilly and grey today, and after a quick stop at the garden to check on things after work, I wanted soup. The first local asparagus turned up the co-op last week, and I had a bunch of it waiting at home in the fridge. This soup is very simple and barely takes half an hour to make, but it tastes like something very fancy. I want to eat it every day until the peas come in, and then I want to eat this soup with peas in place of the asparagus.

I picked up a couple of new books over the weekend, and spent the better part of Sunday reading An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler. I think there’s a little bit of the book in this soup.

This recipe makes a very small pot of soup. You’ll probably want to double it if you’re feeding more than one or two.

1 pound of asparagus
1 large leek, white and light green parts only, diced
2 tablespoons butter
A couple tablespoons heavy cream, to taste
Salt and pepper

Snap off the tough ends off the asparagus. Cut the tips off the asparagus and set aside. Cut the rest of the stalks into 1 inch pieces. You can save the ends of the asparagus in the freezer, along with the leek trimmings, to make stock later.

Bring a small saucepan of water to a boil. Generously salt the water and add the asparagus tips. Cook until very tender, about 3 minutes. Transfer the asparagus tips to a bowl with a slotted spoon, reserving the cooking water. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a pot over medium heat, then add the chopped asparagus stalks and leeks. Season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables begin to soften. Don’t let them brown.

Once the vegetables are softened, add enough of the reserved cooking water to just barely cover the vegetables. If you have extra cooking water, save it in case you need to thin the soup later. Simmer until the asparagus is very soft about 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from heat and purée the soup until very smooth. Return to low heat and stir in a little cream. If its too thick, add a little more of the cooking water until you like the consistency. Add the asparagus tips and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Last spring one of my community garden neighbors gave me her extra leek and shallot seedlings, and showed me how she grows leeks in a trench. To grow leeks with nice long white stalks, you need to keep covering the stalk with soil as it grows. Often leeks are planted level with the ground and soil is mounded up around them as they grow. My neighbor told me that she likes this trench method instead because she’s lazy, though you’d hardly think her lazy looking at her garden. She plants her leeks at the bottom of a trench, and then gradually fills it in as the leeks grow. The trench method is a bit more work at planting time, though I do think it makes things a little easier for the rest of the season.

This year I started my own from seed, and this morning I got them in the ground. Note to self for next year, plant the leeks before you start filling in the rest of the beds. I had  terrible time trying to dig my trenches without stepping on the lettuce and beets I planted last weekend!

For a double row of leeks, dig a trench about 8 inches wide and 6 to 8 inches deep down the length of the bed.

Once you have your trench dug, carefully remove the seedlings from their containers and tease apart the individual leeks. It’s not difficult to separate them because they grow slowly and don’t really have a whole lot of roots to get tangled. Then trim the leaves with scissors to about 3 inches. Some of the seedlings may have one or two extra long, scraggly roots. You can trim those to about 3 inches too.

Then place a two rows of seedlings down in the trench, leaning them up against the walls. The leeks should be spaced about 3 to 4 inches apart in the rows. Then carefully add about an inch of soil back into the hole so that the roots and a bit of the stalks are covered. Pat the soil down all the way around the leeks so that they are standing upright, not leaning against the wall of the trench. Then gently water them.

As the leeks begin to grow, add more soil about an inch at a time so that the stalk remains covered up to just below where the leaves split off. You’ll have to do this every couple of weeks through the growing season. In the fall you have leeks with nice long, tender stalks to harvest.

Things are really starting to happen now.  The water doesn’t get turned on at the community garden until mid-April. Normally this isn’t a problem since we’re usually knee deep in mud this time of year, but our last significant rainfall was on March 3rd. This means ever since I planted my peas I’d been hauling a couple of watering cans and whatever containers I can find around the house to the garden each day, and my peas and spinach were getting just barely enough water to stay alive. I wasn’t sure if my poor little perennial herbs were going to make it. As you can probably imagine, the email I got at the end of last week announcing that the water had been turned on was pretty much the most exciting email I’ve received in a long time.

Now that they’re getting enough water, the peas are noticeably taller every day. I’ve enjoyed fresh spinach for dinner twice now. What a treat after a steady diet of kale for the past six months! I’m ready to not eat kale for a long time now. On Saturday I transplanted my lettuce, mixed greens, kale, and chard from the cold frame. I sowed beets and carrots too.  I’m hoping to plant my leeks and onions this weekend. There’s still more brown than green in the garden, but now I have something growing in each of the beds.

In early March I started several kinds of lettuce, red Russian kale, chard, tat soi, and two different packets of mixed greens. I sowed them thickly in big containers, the idea being that I would eat the thinnings while they were in the cold frame, and whatever was left could be planted out in the garden. Now the cold frame is packed with greens that are ready to be transplanted. I’m hoping to get them in the ground this weekend. In the mean time I’ve been going through and snipping off leaves once a week or so, and enjoying the most delicious salads of baby greens. This afternoon I harvested two big handfuls of greens, which we proceeded to eat one leaf at a time, straight out of the salad spinner. This salad is so fresh and delicious, it doesn’t even need any dressing.