It's raining!

I can feel the whole garden growing.

The broccoli is tall, but heading poorly. I'm thinking it's because I started it too late in the season. Anyway, I decided to cut off some of the blossoms, and pick some other veg, and make a Spring Frittata for lunch.

It's delightful to be harvesting out of the raised beds again. Baby turnips, for slicing and eating raw, nearly every day. Greens every day for sure, both for us and the chickens. (The heads of lettuce are filled with tiny slugs and earwigs - I tend to give those to the chickens, who love some protein with their veg. Luckily the kale, chard, and spinach is bug free, for now.) And now shelling peas, getting plumper every day, filling the trellis. I harvested another single asparagus stalk and took it to work to share with the kids. I don't think they liked it much.

I'll saute the veg in some olive oil, add plenty of fresh eggs, salt and pepper, dash of cream, and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. With the heel of last week's sourdough, it'll be a delicious lunch.

We have a long list of outdoor chores to get to, but until the rain stops (and we hope it goes on for a long, long time), those will be on hold. We need to get the trellis for the hops built, as the ones already planted are coming up, and three more kinds are on order and will be shipped to us this week. I need to dig mulch out of the new raised beds to prepare them for the soil mix that is being delivered Monday afternoon. The Hosui Asian Pear I ordered will arrive this week and will need to be planted in one of those beds, as well as some rhubarb and lemon verbena, also arriving this coming week. I found a resource for local lavender; Mountain Valley Growers are sending me twelve plants this week, too. I have 50 herb starts going under the indoor lamp that will go in those beds, everything from Thyme to Savory, and they've all sprouted. So it might just be that I'm doing outdoor chores in the rain, whether I like it or not.

That's ok, it's fun to be busy in the garden and have lots to do. Makes me eager for summer and the bounty we'll have then. My tomato and pepper seedlings are spending the day indoors, as well.

We've begun saving egg shells for tomato planting. I plan to put a dozen crushed eggshells around the rootball of each tomato plant, to help with blossom-end rot, which we had a lot of last year. My Epsom salt rescue came too late to fix the problem. Besides, we have no lack of eggshells here. Every time this bowl holds 12 (or 24 halves), I crush them and put them in a small container, then in the freezer. I'll be planting 12 tomato plants, so I need a minimum of 12 dozen eggshells. It wouldn't hurt to add eggshells to the pepper plants, too.

Rhode Island Red, Easter Egger, and Plymouth Barred Rock eggshells

The calcium helps with the uptake and regulation of water in the tomato plants, and we could really use help with that, in our drought-starved area. I read a wonderful post by Garden Betty (also a Californian, though Southern) about how she prepares her beds for tomato plants, and was surprised to see that she adds a fish head to each hole. I'd love to do that, but I'd have Joe the dog and Tasha the cat (not to mention dozens of local raccoons, skunks, and coyotes) digging up my precious plants. So I'll skip that step. However I will follow her idea of spraying the leaves with dissolved aspirin tablets. I am also toying with the idea of using the Florida weave for trellising my tomatoes, rather than making new cages. I'll keep you updated, of course. All of this is just dreamy dreaming right now, but in a month, it'll be time to get these babies in the ground.

I've also spent some time re-doing the summer garden plan, but I'll share that with you when it's closer to planting time.

Happy Saturday! Happy March!