Growin' Rowen

:-) I amuse myself with titles for these posts sometimes. :-)

The garden is coming along nicely. Dave and I are quickly ramping up our salad eating to keep up with the lettuce, spinach and green onions that are in full production. Speaking of, the green onions are a BIG success. They are so sweet and good, and haven't required any additional work on my part. The spacing seems right, they aren't looking too crowded, and I was able to pull out individual green onions without a whole row coming up. I was aiming for about an inch between them in the rows, and a couple of inches between rows. Tight spacing means we have a LOT of green onions, for a very small outlay of space. I will definitely be doing this again. I might even try it this fall if my leftover sets are still good.Above is what the garlic looked like a week ago, it's a bit more bedraggled looking now, as the wind has been gusting above 20mph almost every day since I took this picture. Garlic is pretty sturdy though, so I'm trusting it to handle the abuse.

Rowen has been learning the finer points of "stay on the path," a tough request when his crazy Momma only leaves about 8 inches for said path, then meanders it around corners to better accommodate the plants instead of the walker. :-D He's getting pretty good at it though.

The potatoes have sprouted, most of them. Yay! I'm anxiously waiting for signs of life from the middle row, but the front and back rows are mostly - partially up, so I'm hopeful that I didn't kill them all by putting them in before the last snow.

The beans have sprouted, including some of the runner beans that Rowen "helped" plant. The runner beans are entirely for the local pollinators. I'm rehabilitating some areas of the backyard from the damage the last owner left. The landlady didn't like the natural methods I was employing last year. (i.e. weeds, the neighbors complained, there was poison involved, it wasn't a good day.) So, this year I've planted tons of peas and beans in those places and I'm hoping that a bit of compost and some healthy growing things, will help them along. Next year, (if this year goes well) I'll think about planting food for us in those spots.

The cabbages are filling out nicely. We'll have 7 good sized plants this year, which makes me happy. True to my word, I gave them their own bed, with lots of space and light, so they'll hopefully do better than last year. I failed again at growing them from seed. All my little cabbage babies died in the trays. Oh well, there's always next year.

I have cucumber and black zuchinni seeds sprouted in hills on the East side of the garden. As well as a whole host of squash babies sprouting in the compost pile. :-D I may let a few of the volunteers there live, if only out of curiosity. Even though Dave might kill me. :-D

Right now Rowen doesn't seem to be interested in the the sprouted plant babies. I'm not sure he comprehends that those tiny green leaves are from the seeds that he helped put in the ground. It's a tough concept, and 2 is probably a bit early for it. So, we'll keep trying. Right now I mostly try to keep him from walking on them. He is very interested in tools. He sees me and Dave use tools, and we have a set of small plastic ones that he can use, but he totally knows the difference and it's increasingly hard to get him interested in the small plastic ones, when he knows that he wants the big serious ones. To this end, I'll usually let him help with the hoeing, which usually consists of me helping to hold the weight of it, while he furiously works to make it go up and down. He also gets to help push the mower over shorter grass, again with me or Dave doing most of the work. (It's a push-reel mower, don't call DHS on us.) Usually a few minutes of this and he'll decide he's helped enough and will let us take control back. I sometime have to catch myself, when I start to get irritated with the delays and interruptions, and I have to remind myself that this is early training and NOT a waste of my time. In ten years no one will remember if I got the side lawn totally mowed on Friday night, but Rowen will remember getting to help with the mowing, and it'll make transitioning that chore to his responsibility a bit easier.