Garden Update

LAKE MACBRIDE— The house doors are open, creating a cross breeze that is very nice. This morning has been weeding the garden, and cleaning up the kitchen, neither of which jobs is close to finished. Time for an update on local food and the garden, beginning with the lawn.

With the abundant rains, the lawn had gotten lush and long. I spent three hours yesterday cutting and bagging the clippings on a third of the property, and now my tomatoes have their first layer of mulch to suppress weeds. Some say it is a bad idea to use grass clippings to mulch the garden because the seeds of weeds may be included. Others say the grass clippings should be left on the lawn for mulch. I am more concerned about suppressing the weeds in the garden. The rest of the spring grass clipping harvest is expected to take another four hours.

The tomatoes grown from seed and transplanted into the garden have taken. This year’s tomato plan means planting less in my plot, but because of my relationships with other growers, we should have more and diverse varieties. With the mulch being laid down, there is not much to do with tomatoes other than to watch them grow.

With our share from the CSA plus the greens from our garden, we are having salads daily, most times as a meal. The types of lettuce from each source are complementary, and there is plenty of produce to load each meal with veggie goodness. The key lesson I am learning this year is to keep planting lettuce and greens throughout the season. It will be a year of abundance.

We will have a bumper crop of oregano, and I am using the dehydrator to dry some of the herbage. A little goes a long way, so if I can store a small jar of dried oregano, it will last the winter.

Much more to write about, but there’s work to do.