rough start

Whew! it's been pretty crazy here lately. The weather is just nutty! No water shortage for sure.... couple the rain with some high temps (upper 80s) this week, we're hoping to see some G-R-O-W-T-H in our plot. For crying out loud. I can't believe how stunted our little plants are. We've decided we need to try something different with our soil. We'll cut our losses with the beets and probably the radishes.... although look at this! Our first "harvest!" We pulled this one just out of curiosity. The radish growth is so oddly uneven that I decided to see what, if anything, was going on underground. I initially regretted pulling this cutie, but then was so impressed with its flavor and texture, that it renewed my faith in our ability to grow table-worthy vegetables. So the oddness of it all is this: of about 60 seedlings, like four are at this stage of growth. The rest seem to all be arrested at the first-true leaf stage. So very very strange. Honestly, I don't know what to make of it. I've decided I need to learn more about the effects of temperature on plant development. I've just cast off all the brassicas as "cool-weather" plants and used that to explain our poor growth but they must not all be the same. Must. learn. more.

We've decided that our bed-preparation system of layers must be the problem. Cuz see this?WTH? our plants are actually about as big as they were when we planted them. We are getting new growth, but with the kale for example, the new leaves replace leaves that die. So no net positive increase in biomass it seems. Ho hum.

As usual: we bought a little 3" cilantro. Planted it. It didn't really grow that much. We didn't need any so we never harvested any stems. Now it's bolting. Perfect. It always goes that way with me and cilantro.

I really wonder how gardeners accumulate knowledge that helps them to be better gardeners with delicious results down the road. The secrets, they elude me.

Okay, admittedly, it's just been our first 6 weeks. We'll get the hang of it. We'll make our little plot work. We will not be deterred! We've got a bunch of basil seedlings, some okra, and some more tomatoes to transplant -- so we'll just keep on. It's supposed to cool off a bit, so this weekend will be a really nice time to be in the garden.