There’s been lots happening in the garden.

Here’s an updated map of the beds for this year.

Between many days of extreme wind, much of this has been planted already. The number of beds has grown to the point that it is a fair amount of work to keep up with all this. I find it very satisfying work and am increasingly more excited about the parts of the days I spend out in the garden than those I spend in front of my computer.

For most of the beans, I’ve planted half a bed now and am waiting to plant the rest until the monsoons come. (There is a school of thinking here that you should wait to plant everything with the monsoons. I’m unsure so am running some tests.)

The tomatoes are looking very good, though I unknowingly mixed in some hybrid seeds and so may get some odd results. (Long story, but we made a huge batch of salsa last year that included some neighbor’s tomatoes. I thought it would be fun to save a mix of the seeds, but didn’t realize that one of the varieties was a hybrid.)

The sweet potatoes are looking especially strong this year. We have over 40 slips (starts). I used a new technique of putting a small potato in a carton of sand this year (the leafy starts are pulled off and potted separately; then more grow):

This worked very well with each potato like this yielding many (20+?) slips. In the past, I’ve just pulled slips off potatoes in the pantry because that way, we could still eat the potatoes. :)

I think our starts in general look a lot stronger this year. I credit that in part to our new potting soil Happy Frog, which was recommended by a guest speaker from the county extension office who we had at one of our seed meetings.

We’ve also been continuing to improve the soil in the beds and are hopeful for a great crop this year.

We are eating a lot from the garden right now. Last night’s dinner was almost entirely grown here. We had:

• Steamed artichokes with mustard aioli
• Grilled garlic scapes
• Apples (not grown here) and cheese
• A big salad with homemade sourdough bread with scape compound butter

We’ve also been eating a lot of asparagus and spring onions. Yum!