Mother Nature Gets it Right

Peony season is upon us! I've had these in the garden for the past 5 years. This is their best year yet. I'm tempted to move them to a better location, but they are finally so gorgeous I actually hate to disturb them. Mother Nature - awesome job lady!!!

I'm not French.....

....but my radishes are! These beauties are fresh from the garden. I don't even really like radishes that much, but they are so beautiful I have to grow them. Look how pretty!!!

Guess what time it is????

It's time to start thinking about seeds, glorious seeds!

I just placed my first seed order for this years garden. Normally I save seeds from the season, but I'm still a little low on some this year so I have to stock up. I ordered from Seed Savers this time around, but I'm also a big fan of Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company and Heirloom Seeds - all good, and all have slightly different seeds so it's fun to look at everyone's offerings each year. Heirloom Seeds was my first favorite, but their website is kind of bad and it's hard to see what you're getting, so you have to be "in the know" about which varietals you like. After 6 years of growing, I have figured out pretty well what works and doesn't work in my garden, and how sometimes things might be really fun to grow, but if you don't like to eat them, it's just a waste of time. And some things grow so quickly that if you aren't there to harvest at the exact right time, they will pass you right on by. That happened to me with Bok Choy - that stuff takes no time to grow and no time to go past it's prime. And radishes, those little mothers grow very fast in our wet cool climate.

Last year I had a little problem with the slugs. It's pretty freaking upsetting when those little bastards eat your seedlings - they will cut them right off at the stems and devour an entire garden bed before you even know what happened. I lost all my beets except one last year to the slugs. I wonder, if over time, they just get used to the slug bait. They might. This year I hope to be ready for them, but for any of you growers out there, it's a risky business. You win some and you lose some. Slugs = my nemesis (nemeses?)

For now, this is what I've ordered for restock. I still need to get potatoes (which are really easy and fun to grow), I have perennial artichokes and asparagus so don't need those, but I still need to add a few more beans, the peas, and Savoy cabbage - which is my favorite. 

Spinach, 2 kinds of swiss chard

Yellow onion, radish, shallots

Oak leaf lettuce, Marveille de Quartre Saison, butter lettuce

Cucumber, leeks, freckle lettuce

Celery, lemon cukes, pickling cukes

Red cabbage, green cabbage, cauliflower

Beets, broccoli, brussels sprouts

Red beets, golden beets, Chioggia beets

Kale, arugula, french climbing beans

Carrots

So, now I have to get out there and start preparing the beds. The kale and things like that can go in around NOW - which of course they wont because c'mon - who are we kidding - but soon. Really. Time's a wastin'!

Meet the Farm!

Many, many, many future posts will be about the farm. The farm is awesome! The farm can be a really big pain in the ass. If you want a lot of chores, get an old farm.  We love the farm and spend as much time as we can here. This place is the perfect distance from Seattle - just over an hour away - far enough from the big city to be quiet and peaceful and still close enough to towns with grocery stores and hardware stores to be manageable. We love it here, even though it requires endless hours of weeding, mowing and cutting back blackberry.

We call it a farm because in it's youth (1905) it was a dairy farm. But it's not actually an active farm right now because we aren't here all the time. We do have fruit trees and vegetable gardens though - and that's enough work for now.

I took these photo's over the weekend of May 4-5. The weather was super sunny, giving us the big spring tease that summer may actually be coming! If you look closely you can see weeds growing right now!