The emplantening is upon us.
The Tilth edible plants sale descended upon Meridian Park this weekend. The weather was gorgeous, so the crowds were fierce. Well, as fierce as Seattleites browsing for cherry tomatoes can get.
Our haul included:
- Tomato, Paul Robeson (one of my favorites)
- Tomato, Mushroom Basket (looks interesting)
- Tomato, Sweet Million (always super productive)
- Tomato, Indigo Rose (dark purple)
- Tomato, Velvet Red (described as rich, sweet, heavy yield)
- Tomato, Momotaro (my other favorite)
- Tomato, Sunpeach (a sweeter version of Sun gold)
- Cucumber, Lemon x 2
- Cucumber, Tasty Jade
- Pumpkin, Pum-ke-mon
- Pumpkin, Little Casperita
Alton and I loosened the soil and enriched it with some fresh compost (is that an oxymoron?) so it is nice and loose. One wrong step and you will sink several inches.
We were a little ambitious with out tomato planting last year, which resulted in serious competition for space. This year, I am going to try to curb my enthusiasm to give more room for each plant. Plan to do the “Italian grandfather” method of vertical gardening, which works well and keeps me occupied with training the vines. I anticipate that there will be many rogue volunteers. We will keep the most vigorous, and I will refrain from transplanting them, which really hindered their growth. The space along the sidewalk becomes a tomato jungle in the late summer. We will encourage this kind of volunteerism as the little kids in the neighborhood like to pick them.
The raspberry bushes keep trying to metastasize, so Alton and I cleared the boxes of anything resembling a rogue raspberry root. I had previously pruned back the old dessicated canes, and left anything that had a bud on it. These branches have become super lush. Last year I tried to just contain all of the bushes with twine, but they quickly became very tangled. This year I established 4 posts around the raspberries and created several levels of twine for them to grow along. This looks more promising as they have more space to grow upward and along the horizontal parts. The season is young but it already looks like a raspberry vortex.
The kids planted sunflower seeds in the corners of each garden box. These have done pretty well in the past, so we aren’t doing any sunflower starts this year. We will try staggering the carrot and lettuce crop this year to keep production up all summer.
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