Early May garden tour

Matthew and his mom have been hard at work this spring, putting in time weeding and mulching now to [theoretically] reduce the workload later.  For mulch, Matthew purchased several bales of straw — transporting them to the garden two or three bales at a time on our bike rack — and Pam picked up more coffee bean sacks.

I must admit that I haven’t actually been to the garden in a couple of weeks, and things change quickly in a spring garden.  Fortunately, you can join me on a virtual garden tour.  (Unfortunately, you can’t taste the food virtually.)

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A few things of note:

• Most of the garden-fresh produce we’ve been eating has come from plants that wintered-over, some inside and some outside the low tunnel — lettuce, kale, carrots, and Swiss chard.
• After years of struggling to grow spinach, we have a bumper crop this year, and it is delicious!
• The attempts to winterize the artichokes failed, so Matthew started new plants from seed this year.
• Our tomato seedlings look WAY better than anything I saw for sale at the farmers’ market on Saturday.  Just sayin’.
• Some of the potatoes are already blooming, and Matthew cut scapes off of some of the garlic last weekend.
• A rascally rabbit got inside the fence and dined on tender young pea shoots, so we mat not have much in the way of a spring pea crop.

Also, more exciting garden-related news: Matthew found out yesterday that he is the recipient of a Slow Food St. Louis biodiversity micro-grant!  His application included plans to grow celeriac and paw paws, both items that Slow Food StL identified as being of interest to local chefs.

If there’s anything I’m missing, I’ll let Matthew add it in the comments.

How’s YOUR garden growing?