The Patchwork Kitchen Garden: The Third Week
Rain, rain, rain and more rain!
What can I say, rain, rain and more rain. That’s the theme this week. It’s been so rainy I feel like I’m living in the British Isles but with all this rain. It literally rained every single day this week and Monday was the worst.
They forecasted my area to get about an inch of rain but I feel like I definitely got more. Some of my overturned gardening containers easily had about 3-4 inches of collected rainwater. Mother nature surely wasn’t messing around.
It made me all the more thankful that I put in that tiny pond in my broccoli bed to catch any runoff from my gutters above. Off and on all week this tiny pond did its job and saved my sprouts from being completely flooded and overwhelmed. But even with all this soaking rain this week there has been so much new growth both with my established plants as well as some newcomers I’ve been waiting to meet.
This week I’ve finally got to say hello to some little pea sprouts as well as a singular carrot sprout. From the rain, there is unfortunately a lot of debris from my neighbor’s trees intermingled with my soggy straw mulch so my vegetable bed kind of looks a bit chaotic. Actually it’s so chaotic that I didn’t even realize that I finally had onion sprouts emerging. The more I looked the more sprouts I was finding buried under the sopping wet straw. After I counted about twenty sprouts I stopped counting and will keep observing the bed as these little babies become more visible. I’m thrilled that my onion seeds survived the onslaught of rain although quite a bit of the seeds got washed from where I planted them. Along with this vegetable bed bursting with new life my Huckleberry Gold Potatoes also decided to sprout as well as my dill, yes the dill that I thought got washed away! It’s absolutely wonderful to have these guys join the garden party. Most of these new sprouts are very small but I’m sure with this coming week of sunshine they will be as big and vibrant as my other potatoes and my springtime flowers.
However, these new little sprouts aren’t the only thing new that’s going on. This week, I got the Valencia Orange tree I’ve been waiting to arrive. It’s much smaller than my Key Lime and Meyer Lemon trees but I think it just makes it all the more precious. I’m just glad that my trio of citrus trees could finally be together. All the citrus trees seem to be doing very well in their new pots and seem to have a little bit of growth. The lemon tree has a tiny lemon coming on which is crazy to me, I don’t know if it’s going to actually grow into a lemon because my tree is still very small. But it’s very nice to see it trying to be a lemon tree. Who knows, maybe it will surprise me. Crazier things have happened.
Now for the rest of my garden beds. All my Phloxes are in full bloom even with the rainy weather they still had magnificent ,albeit, soggy blooms all week long. They are positively stunning and I hope they keep blooming for the rest of spring. My wildflower sprouts had very little growth this week most likely because of the lack of sunshine and warmth. But I’m hopeful that they will have more growth in the coming weeks.
The Scotch moss bundles get greener and greener each week. You can tell that there's even more life that’s going to be emerging soon because the light brown bundles are now starting to turn a lovely shade of bright green. However, I do believe one moss bundle didn’t survive the cold winter. It’s still rather dry and not even showing the tiniest signs of springing back. But I’m just going to keep my eye on it and try to rehydrate it and fertilize it in hopes that it will be revived. The only problem is trying to keep the birds away from it, the dry phyllids are very tempting for the birds to use to line their nests with. I just have a strong feeling that I might have to replace it with one of my healthier moss balls. But it’s too early in the season to really give up on it completely. So I will sally forth and just nurture it as much as I could until it’s feeling like it’s old self again, me and this moss ball are a lot alike in this aspect. We both just need time and nurturing to be our best selves when we are not well.
In regards to my other beds, like my Oyster Mushrooms, nothing has really changed this week. Mushrooms are still not ready to grace me with their presence and the dreaded bean thief is still at large. Yes, for a third week in a row I have lost all my bean seeds! However, I do believe I wrongly accused the murder of crows in my neighborhood. I do believe it to be a lone blue jay who has also been tormenting the squirrels. We caught this guy stealing a very large peanut from an unsuspecting squirrel, it was quite the tragic moment. But since I saw this injustice take place I do believe he most likely is the conniving culprit.
Well I do believe that is all for this week. Next week is going to be an even busier week in the garden. I have a lot of work to catch up on. I am hoping to get some more plants established in the garden as well as finishing up my biggest vegetable bed. My summer vegetables are almost ready to be potted outside and I just want to make sure I’m prepared for when the time comes. Before I know it the time will probably sneak up on me, it always does.
In the meantime, you can find the full gallery of my growing garden down below. Until next week, Happy Gardening!
