Spring 2010: Willamette Valley, Oregon State, USA

This year is the year to record. My goal for my humble residential garden is that I will need to buy no vegetables (at the store or farmer's market) for salads this summer while eating salad for lunch or for dinner (me and my husband) at least 3 times a week.
The garden itself has been around for a little while now, but it's time for something more definitive, more shared, and more . . . yeah, just more.

I start with some finished compost left over through the winter and a very green (though inoculated) start on the next one. My big-leaf maple put out more seedlings than I care to count, or the winter was just incredibly mild so they *all* survived. I figured out how to prune my 7-yr old kiwi vines about 1/3 of the way through the project this February, so we'll see what it does to the yield. I'm hoping the yield will be more concentrated, since the vines have yet to produce something that ripens (yes, even in a brown bag with a banana.)

In the 17 half barrels, 5 or so have collards or leeks that thrived through the winter (there's even some fresh parsley out there still) and three are now planted with cold weather seeds: peas along a triangular tomato cage, with lettuce in the outside arches of the barrel; one barrel divided into 3 sections for carrots, radishes, and radicchio, and one barrel (planted more recently) divided in half between broccoli and mustard greens. I'm partial to Red Sails lettuce (when I use lettuce at all; I'm more of a spinach gal) because so far it's done well in my slightly crowded conditions. It has yet to get buggy on me.