I have been volunteering at the greenhouse at City Natives on Tuesday mornings. I had done that years ago and started again this spring. What a magical place to be, especially during our cold and wet spring here in Boston. Those tomato seedlings in the picture above smell so lovely – the smell of summer! I love helping to take care of the seedlings in the greenhouse and hoop house and the vegetable beds outside. Especially, since I did not start seedlings myself this year and my garden is just waking up after a very long winter. So good to get gardening again!
City Natives is an educational urban farm, run by The Trustees of Reservations. The farm runs classes on-site and throughout the city, teaching urban gardeners anything from garden planning over pest control to foraging and bee-keeping. Most of the seedlings will be sold at two plant sales, at City Natives on May 12 and on May 19 in the South End.
My garden had a very late start this year. I just started planting seeds today, April 27, which I think is the latest I have ever started. We had an extremely long and wet winter, with sleet and freezing rain just last week. But now, spring seems to have arrived for good. Today I seeded carrots, radishes, beets, lettuce, peas, kale and Swiss Chard. Because of the birds that have been raiding my peas these past two years, I decided to try row covers this year, which I placed over my two rows of peas and the row of lettuce in between. We’ll see what happens.
Garlic
Freshly planted plot, with some leeks still standing from last season
Leeks … the only thing still growing in my plot. Today I spent a few hours in the garden harvesting my last carrots, parsley and kale and a handful of leeks before I did a final weeding of my plot and added a cover of salt marsh hay for the winter. I checked on the garlic and saw a couple of thin green sprouts.
I am sad the season is coming to an end, but it was a pretty good one. Tonight for dinner, we had roasted vegetables (the leeks, carrots and garlic came from my garden) with a smokey yogurt dip and salad (parsley from the garden). It always feels good to have home-grown food on the table.
September bouquet: dahlias, parsley, radishes and asparagus
Mini dahlia in soy sauce dish
Last night, we had the first night frost of the season and there will be a few cold nights ahead. I put all our houseplants indoors yesterday, but still need to clean up my plot. The nasturtium and dahlias look limp but all the veggies survived. The dahlia tubers will be dug up today and I will also harvest any tender greens from the plot and put the garden hoses away. The water in our community garden is now shut off. It is also time to clean out the plants in my containers on the porch and bring inside my herbs that I plan to overwinter: rosemary, sage, thyme.
Lightly frosted carrot leaves
Plot in early November: carrots, radishes, parsley, Swiss Chard, leeks, kale, chicory and flowers.
Today I spent a couple of hours getting the plot ready for winter. I ripped out spent plants, pulled weeds and turned the soil. During the process, I found a number of potatoes I had left in the ground, a welcome basis for today’s dinner of roasted potatoes and carrots and pork tenderloin with mushrooms.
The rain kept me from cleaning up more than I had planned to, but I still got to pick some flowers for a little bouquet. Planting more flowers this season was definitely a good idea. I loved having fresh flowers every week this summer and fall.
Dahlia, parsley flowers and foliage