Spinning wheels in the garden

The garden continues to grow, though it’s been in a low-key state lately. That’s probably because of our involvement with it. The Arboretum will be discontinuing the adopt-a-plot program at the end of the month, and it seems like a lot of the plotters (for lack of a better term) aren’t really doing much lately. The garden itself isn’t going away, but people will go back to volunteering on a more communal basis.

So that’s been a bit of a bummer for us, and has definitely limited our enthusiasm for long-term planting. It’s been really nice to have the space and facilities available for personal use, and (turnip thieves notwithstanding) it’s also been great to be able to grow and harvest our own produce when we want it. But given that volunteering will now be on a set schedule, I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to participate in it in the future.

So, while we’ve done some planting since the weather turned warmer, it’s mainly been short growing plants: radishes, lettuce, pak choi, misome, arugula. As I’ve mentioned before, the tomatillo and molokhiya seedlings that we were sprouting did get planted; hopefully they fit in to whatever the new plans for the garden will be.

The misome that was flowering has now really gone to seed- I’m planning on saving some to see if it actually does grow. It would be a bummer if this hybrid went through all of the effort to produce non-viable seed.

The lettuces and radacchio will definitely be harvestable before the end of the month, though we’ll probably leave some growing. I took these photos about a week ago, and they’ve visibly grown as of today.

The beets really did not like being transplanted. We probably lost about half of them. Next time I grow them, I’ll seed them directly. This experience has definitely taught us some lessons about a lot of plants, so it’s been worthwhile. Hopefully we’ll be able to use some of this knowledge in the near future…