It’s pea season in Seattle, and why everybody in the city with a patch of land and little bit of sun doesn’t grow peas, I don’t know. We humans might not have enjoyed these past few damp weeks, but my garden has loved it, and a mere ten-foot row of snow peas and sugar snaps are already producing about as fast as we can eat ’em.
It’s gonna be a bumper crop. Yum.
It’s also an incredible bargain. For the cost of a bag of compost, a packet of seeds, a cup or so of bonemeal and maybe an hour of work, my daughter and I will enjoy all the fresh organic peas we can eat throughout the entire month of June. Delicious yes, but you also can’t get much healthier or thriftier than that.
Sorry for straying from the angry, partisan politics, but I just needed to celebrate the profound pleasure that comes from growing, eating and sharing one’s own food.
I’ve got 8 chickens. Best eggs ever.
Who is that “pea-brain” with the sunglasses?
Peas are nice, but me, I’m all about apartment-balcony tomatoes.
Susan @3,
In another six weeks or so I’ll be sharing the profundity of my tomatoes. But tomatoes take a lot more time and care and input to grow well ’round these parts, and even then can produce heartache. So peas are really a much better example of how easy it is to plant an edible garden in Seattle.
FYI, we’ve already finished eating our first plantings of radishes and arugula, have been 100% self-sufficient in lettuce for nearly a month (and we eat a lot of salad), have had at least a half dozen generous pickings of mustard and kale each, and are just now starting to sample our first ripe raspberries.
Raspberries are another no-brainer for Seattle gardeners with a suitable location. Our 12-foot row of everbearing varieties produces fruit from June through October, and often in copious quantities. That’s hundreds of dollars of fresh organic raspberries a year in exchange for a little bit of weeding, pruning, fertilizing, mulching and watering.
My arugula is doing great; I can’t believe how fast it grows. My lettuce, every single freaking plant, fell victim to slugs over the weekend. So much for Slug Bait . . . My blueberries, though, look like they’re going to have a banner year.
I’ve tried to grow tomatoes at my home here for years, without success. Some sort of fungus attacks them right before they ripen. So instead I have to shell out some bucks for heirloom tomatoes from the local farmers who manage to avoid the same blight I have to deal with. I hate buying the ones in the store, because those varietys have been cultivated for color and durability in shipment not for taste.
Now blackberries, I seem to be able to grow in abundance. Too bad I don’t really care for blackberries – I’d much prefer blueberries.
We had a bumper crop of cherries this past year, but that means the trees will probably go into half-dormancy this year (reduced output), so I pruned them way back in the fall. Maybe next year will be another bumper crop.
proud leftist @5,
My solution is to over-sow in wide rows, so the slugs can’t get them all. Once the lettuce has a few true leaves, it can outgrow the damage.
Then again, I don’t have big banana slugs, and I occasionally scout my garden at night with a flashlight hunting for slugs.
rhp @6,
Try Stupice. It’s a short season variety that seems fairly resistant to late blight. Smallish fruit, but tasty, and very productive if kept well watered and fertilized. Also, use soaker hoses during the summer so you don’t wet the foliage while watering.
Goldy,
By “over-sow in wide rows” do you mean spreading the seeds like an inch thick or something?
rhp
I don’t have a full-sun garden, but do pretty well with Early Girl and cherry tomatoes, haven’t had much of a fungus problem.
proud leftist @8,
I mean sowing in all directions the width of the bed, perhaps even broadcasting the seed, and then gradually thinning so that each head is relatively evenly spaced apart in all directions. “Wide row” and “square foot” gardening are great ways to grow a lot of food in a small space.
FYI, I eat all my lettuce thinnings, even the sprouts. Just toss them into a salad. In fact, I’ve become so fond of radish starts, I’ve started planting them just for that, and eating them when they sprout their first true leaves.
Tomatos, tomatos, tomatos…except they all ripen in a one week window.
ok, and we also have “blue state” blueberries
Is this the open thread? I just want to ask if this guy is a Republican:
“A western Missouri man convicted of murdering one of four children he fathered with his own daughter has been sentenced to life plus 22 years in prison.”
http://www.aolnews.com/crime/a.....r/19506810
Is he a Republican? Does anyone know? I’m just asking because I’m curious. He’s gonna be working in the prison pea patch for, oh, the next 75 years or so.
Hey Goldy, could you post a map to your lettuce patch?
Either my soil isn’t good garden soil, or my green thumb is blighted. Either way gardens at my house grow more dandelions than produce. I have tomato plants I put in that are dying from too much rain or too little sun or God knows what, flowers that are supposed to be invincible succumbing to the baleful influence of my garden. And the blueberries that were planted by a former owner that always mysteriously thrived were injudiciously pruned by a well meaning friend. Cut right down to the ground like roses. No blueberries this year.
Oh well. I can exercise my need to create with my tools I guess. And be respectfully envious of Goldys’ thriving garden. And Lefists’ blueberries.
We all should enjoy gardening while we can. There’s a terribly scary chance we may not be able to forever.
ScienceDaily (June 3, 2010) — Less ice covers the Arctic today than at any time in recent geologic history.
We have apple, cherry & plum trees.
We grow raspberries.
Jam, Jelly, freeze ’em and can ’em.
We have 30 chickens for eggs.
With only 2 off us, we grow squash, lettuce, snap-peas & tomatoes….and have a half-share of veggies from the University Veggie Garden Program. Great variety. It’s awesome.
We catch fish and eat ’em fresh.
We shoot deer, butcher them and make some jerky.
We grow grass, get barley from a micro-brewery, feed it to cattle, shoot the 2 year-olds in the head, butcher them and eat ’em.
MikeBoyScout–
So Global Warming is going to end gardening in Seattle soon?
Wow, you must enjoy Lee’s pot garden.
lost @ 13
Sorry about your blueberries. Prune the dead wood and suckers, never cut blueberries to the ground. What’s great about having your own blueberry and raspberry (and plenty of blackberry) bushes is that you can simply pick what you need for the meal at hand. As we know, in a small household, when we pay high prices for berries at the store, they come in volumes too large to eat before the mold sets in.
re 15: Somehow I knew you’d take a shine to making jerky.
leave it to the rabbit to spoil a decent thread.
@5
Another trick for lettuce is to plant a border of nasturtiums. The slugs don’t like them and hopefully will leave your lettuce alone.
Raised beds also help some with keeping the slugs out.
Man Goldy, you are hard to look at. No wonder all those hookers run away.
On a positive note, the garden looks nice.
@15 Why the hell do two people need 30 chickens to keep them in eggs?
And, somehow, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out you’re fishing without a license and shooting deer out of season …
@21 Why do you care what Goldy looks like, unless you’re gay or pimping your sister?
@12 “Hey Goldy, could you post a map to your lettuce patch?”
Don’t do it, Goldy.
@15 Why no mention of the goat?
Permit me to rewrite goldy’s post …
It’s like the wild west in Beltown, with people getting shot and mugged every day. The people I told you to vote for are doing a crappy job running this city. But I don’t want you to notice or pay attention to that. I want you to think about gardening. Thanks alot, sheep.
Steve @ 25
Cynny doesn’t consider his goat as livestock. Rather, he considers the goat as a domestic servant/friend.
22. Roger Rabbit spews:
Our neighbor kid tends to them.
He takes 1/2 the eggs.
We share excess with neighbors & friends….something you selfish Leftist KLOWNS wouldn’t understand.
troll @ 26–
Funny.
Goldy & his ilk would have a difficult time surviving in the Wild West. No guv’mint handouts and such. They are a bunch of pansy-asses. They sweat & fret over a little teeny-tiny garden. Working on a ranch all year round might actually make an adolescent out of the little boy.
@26
Yesh … if you think Belltown is dangerous I should take you to a bad neighborhood in Baltimore.
Is there crime in the city? Yes. Does it seem like some neighborhoods have a bit more crime than others? Yes. Is violent crime in Seattle all that high compared to other major cities? No.
So troll, what do you think the people running the city should be doing differently? Remember there isn’t exactly a lot of money right now to spend on things. Also remember that the problem for hiring more police isn’t money but the ability of the police department to screen and train new officers.
re 28:
I only have 8 chickens, but I still give away 2 cartons per week gratis. It’s part of an anti-corporatist food movement. With millons of people supplying their neighbors with free food, it’s bound to seriously cut into corporate food profits at some point.
Glad to see you’re aboard.
Incidentally, you are now in violation of laws that have been pushed through congress and signed by Obama that make giving food away that you have grown against the law (allegedly for health reasons).
I know this will cheer you because you because you can now point to Obanma as just another corporatist. And you’d be right. Both he and Biden voted in favor of the new bankruptcy laws that have so many medical patients losing their homes.
Even so, the Democrats are still far and away better than the Republicans corporate bootlickers.
headless @ 31–
We share a real defiant attitude toward excessive big government that stupes to making giving away food a crime!
@28
I feed all sorts of folks out of my garden and share some fire wood with the neighbors when the power goes out in the winter.
Liberalism is based on building community and helping each other out; classical conservatism is too. I’m not sure WTF that tea bagger shit you’ve been spewing is based on.
I just picked a big tub of strawberries and rhubarb, in the spirit of tea-baggerism I’m going to horde all the jam and the pie I make and eat it all myself.
34
How do you get rhubarb to grow? I’ve got a plant that comes up every year, then withers and dries up about this time of year.
@35
I do nothing at all and the thing grows like crazy. The plant’s not in full sun and is in a bit of a drippy spot.
I can’t grow cabbages, broccoli, or potatoes, without the use of a tub full of pesticides, so I don’t bother with those.
Chris @20,
Raised beds go without saying. Or should. All my beds were laboriously double-dug two feet deep out of clay and cobbles, then amended and raised six to ten inches above ground level.
Everything grows earlier, faster, and better in in a raised bed.
Michael @36,
I don’t grow summer cole crops like cabbage or broccoli because of the aphids. But I will do a late planting of kale and collards to harvest in the fall and winter when most insects aren’t a problem.
Geez, um, thanks for sharing your Narcissistic Personality Disorder with us again, KLOWN.
A rundown of NPD symptoms, courtesy of the Mayo Clinic:
My, goodness! You’d make for a mighty fine NPD poster child, Klynical!
@38
Thanks for the tip.
I might have to try adding a few things to my fall garden this year.
re 32: No. It’s the corporations that sponsor the politicians that I resent.
I dunno, I think Goldy’s pretty cute