My life has been busy and complicated recently, but the plants grow regardless. My perennials are starting to get new leaves--the artichokes are a foot tall, the mint family herbs (mint, rosemary, oregano, lavender, thyme and sage) have new buds, my miracle overwintering cilantro is starting to grow again. Unfortunately, the grass and weeds are growing too. Fruit trees are blooming. I spent a good bit of last weekend weeding out the front bed. Lots of nightshade, feral spurge (which is a plant now hate irrationally) along with that little wild mustard that grows everywhere in my yard.My starts are doing very well. Everything is up--even the peppers and eggplant have a few sprouts up now. The greens are looking particularly luxurious. These are joi choi and spinach. I should really turn them--the plants farther from the window are much smaller.
Behind them are my bush beans--painted beans, from the permaculture teacher, and purple green beans. My housemate grew the purple beans last year and they produced steadily until well into October. This is a good picture of their cotyledons. You can really see the shape of the bean halves in these.
I learned recently that a difference between peas and beans is that pea cotyledons stay underground. My garbanzos--a kind of pea-- have gotten huge, much bigger than any of my other starts. I can see the cotyledons just at the surface of the soil. I'm really impressed with these little plants. It hasn't been very warm out, and the beans aren't nearly so developed. Is it because I sprouted them before I planted them? I'm excited to see what they are like and how big they get, and how much they produce. As you can see from these images, it has been very gray and wet here. Maybe some day I'll be able to take decent pictures.
While my plants grow in the protection of the sun porch, I've been working the beds in the back yard. I've been doing keyhole beds, to maximize space and bed access, and because they are less boring. I got kale starts a few weeks ago, and on the first day of spring I prepared this bed and planted kale and shallots. I put cardboard down on the beds that haven't been planted yet.
