Transplants Begin!

I arrived at the garden on Saturday morning to find these beauties inside the fence.  Such a lovely treat.  These kale, collards, broccoli and tomatoes are the first transplants that Ginkgo has planted this season.

 

A special shout out is in order for the awesome team from the Palmer House Hilton.  These transplant gurus snapped to work by divvying up the labor.  One person to place the plants evenly on the soil, one to dig a hole, one to loosen the roots and pop the transplant in.  I've never seen such a coordinated effort at Ginkgo and I tried to assure them that we weren't task masters, but the team indicated that tight deadlines were their specialty.  Hard working, efficient, and you couldn't ask for a friendlier bunch.  Thanks and thanks!

We missed Chris on round 1 of the group photo, but his efforts shouldn't go unmentioned.  Before embarking on back to back trips around the country to split sides with his improv and responsibly celebrate, Chris added to his track record as a weed annihilation machine and helped to get those transplants in and fences up.

Bobbi-Lee cleaned out our earth machine which was full of the lightest fluffiest compost I've ever handled.  We usually just ignore the bins and focus more on our managed 3 bin systems, but this passive approach broke some high quality trimmings down into the definition of loamy.


Here we are using kale as a border crop to maximize output per bed.  There should be plenty of space to reach in and handle the tomatoes and all we need now are some marigolds to ward off flea beetles.  I can't wait to see these beds all grown up. 

may 28, 2011: quickening

The second radish of the season. (I ate the first.)

There comes a time in each gardening season when things start to happen of their own accord. Seeds emerge from the muddy ground to strain against the row cover. The plants that we sow by choice begin to outnumber those that we remove.

The soil no longer seems to be a sink for our inputs of seed, water, labor, and concern. The semblance is, of course, only in our minds: our garden has not been dormant over the last few weeks, but occulted by topsoil. We have been impatient, weary of even the vestige of winter. We need to relax. (I need to relax.)

The day on which we transplant the first batch of tomato and pepper seedlings seems like the official start of a season, like the Memorial Day weekend during which the day occurred. On the annoyingly chilly Thursday evening before Memorial Day, Susan and Dave brought flats of starts from the greenhouse to the garden. We swaddled the seedlings in straw bales and row cover and hoped that they were still alive on Saturday.

transplanting tomatoes

The seedlings emerged unfrozen from our makeshift cold frame on Saturday morning. I arranged the small pots of peppers and tomatoes in the beds in triangular patterns. Before allowing the other volunteers to dig holes for the starts, I mapped the beds by variety, recording the location of each seedling so that we did not have to rely on scrawled markings on plastic tabs or chopsticks when it was time to save seeds for next season. (Did I mention that I needed to relax?)

planting peppers

While I completed the bed maps and worried about incipient OCD, the other volunteers dug holes deep enough so that the surface of the beds came just below the first true leaves of the seedlings. They filled the holes with water. After the soil had absorbed the water, the volunteers removed the seedlings from their pots and transferred them to the holes. Soil and more water followed the seedlings. We finished by mulching the beds with straw and surrounding them with chicken wire (or, more accurately, rabbit-fencing).

Katrina and April fence peas

We moved on to the beds that we had planted in prior weeks. We used branches newly pruned from our fruit trees as fence posts. We retrieved from storage the braided trunk of an old alley-abandoned ficus that we’ve used for the last few years as a fence post, driving the brittle stalk into the soil of the carrot bed and twist-tying it to a roll of rabbit-fencing. (Our appreciation for particular pieces of repurposed detritus approaches animism.)

Annie and Evelyn arranged paving stones in the dodecahedron bed, and planted mounds of butternut squash, radishes, and spinach between the pavers. The pavers always seem like a good idea at the beginning of the season, before they start to disappear into the loose soil of the bed.

oh hai u rly shld B working

While everyone else worked at the Garden, Dave biked out to Kilbourn Greenhouse to pot more seedlings. It is unclear how much potting he was able to accomplish.

pole beans

chives in bloom