sprite writes
broodings from the burrow

May 22, 2018


mid-may garden update
posted by soe 1:05 am

Rudi and I headed by the garden Sunday evening, he to put down beer to entice the slugs away from our strawberries and I to plant my potatoes. We’d had seven straight days of rain by that point, so there would be no need to water, but pulling out some of the weeds, which had irritating flourished without sun, was necessary.

Mid-May Garden Scenes

I’m growing quite a jungle right now, particularly in contrast with this scene from ten weeks ago when I planted my peas.

Our slugs are not like the ones I grew up with, large and fat and out only on dewy mornings and rainy days. Ours are tiny, smaller than your pinky fingernail, and love to decimate delicate basil leaves and to hollow out strawberries. I learned after our first year of gardening to bite strawberries carefully if they looked like they had a tiny hole anywhere on them. So we put down peanut butter lids filled with cheap beer to encourage them to their drunken deaths instead.

I had two bags of seed potatoes I’d purchased earlier in the month, as well as sprouted potatoes and sweet potatoes from over the winter that I’d put aside for the garden. I also found some peanuts I’d bought but never planted, so I threw those into the back of the potato patch as well. Next week I’ll re-cover any errant potatoes that have been exposed to the air (no one loves the smell of rotting potatoes, except, apparently the squirrels who are awaiting tomato season by digging for buried treasure) and plant some beans to that section of the plot, in an attempt to grow upwards in the same space.

Mid-May Garden Scenes

My peas have reached navel height and will require additional supports this week. Still no pods, but plenty of flowers. If we don’t get hit with a prolonged heatwave, I’m optimistic about the season.

Mid-May Garden Scenes

My greens are flourishing. I’ve planted lettuces, spinach, kale, and arugula — both seeds and seedlings — before, but they’ve never done so well that I’ve been able to pick whole heads at a time, instead contenting myself with picking leaves off the plants before they bolted. This year, though, we’ve already harvested three heads of lettuce from the section above. That row of lettuces in the shot below will be thinned next week.

Mid-May Garden Scenes

Nearly all the basil we planted last week is gone, victim either to wildlife or seven inches of rainfall. I had two green basils survive, but we didn’t find any of the purple basil that Rudi had planted amidst the strawberries, so I’ll either need to buy new at the farmers market or see if I have any seeds to try starting them on my windowsill at work. (My tomato seedlings are growing well there now and will need to be repotted into individual containers within the next week. It may be that I started the seeds too late for this year, but it will have been an encouraging experiment, no matter the outcome.)

Soon, I’ll have to start thinking about what else I want to grow in the garden this year. I haven’t had a lot of luck with squash in the past, but this could a turning point, particularly since my plot has more sun this year. I’ll keep you updated!

Category: garden. There is/are 3 Comments.



Beautiful! But, I am ready for the rain to be over for a bit!

Comment by Kat 05.22.18 @ 8:12 am

Your garden looks beautiful! So green. Those slugs sound awful. Somehow I didn’t think the weather there was conducive to slugs, but I can see that lots of rain might bring them out.

Comment by Nan 05.22.18 @ 9:03 am

Slugs in strawberries. Ew! Let’s hope they prefer to get drunk.

Comment by Karen 05.22.18 @ 6:27 pm