Leeky garden

Today I planted leeks. I got the seedlings last weekend, but didn't want to go out in the rain to plant them then, and it's dark by the time I get home from work.

I found this guy on one of the weeds I cleared away before digging the bed:


And then I planted the leeks. To get the biggest white part, you "blanch" them. Traditionally this is done by planting them in a trench and gradually filling it in as they grow, or by planting them normally and mounding dirt up around them as they grow, but Pam Pierce (author of Golden Gate Gardening, and the teacher for the gardening class I took in the fall) has a better way: she plants them up to the first leaf joint when she transplants them. It takes less space and less dirt to do it that way, so that's what I do too.



I only got through four of the six cells in the six pack before I ran out of room in the bed. That's an old broccoli plant to the left. I'd had this area planted with broccoli before, but it was romanesco broccoli, so it was only supposed to produce one head per plant. This one decided not to play by the rules and sprouted another head after I cut the first one off. Too small to make even a snack, I decided to let it bloom for curiosity's sake:



You can see the classic cross-shaped flower of the mustard family, to which broccoli and the other cole crops belong. I pulled up the last of the other broccoli plants to make room for the leeks, and we're going to have the broccoli leaves tonight, mixed with some chard from the CSA. I'll leave the one that's flowering, though.

The garlic is going strong. That's elephant garlic in front. Six heads of that, and probably 120 heads of regular garlic for bulbs in this bed and the other garlic bed combined, and a couple of patches of the smaller cloves to be used as green garlic. Green garlic is on the menu tonight as well.



I'm going to be awfully busy when all of this garlic is ready to harvest, clean, cure and braid. The goal is to produce an entire year's worth of garlic. It'll be cool if I accomplish that, though I don't think I'll try it again. Garlic is in the ground from October to June or July, and it takes up a lot of space I could use for other things. Still, it's kind of a fun challenge to see if I can do it.

I planted some mint a few weeks ago. I've tried mint a couple of times before, but it is a thirsty plant, and I've only ever planted it in containers, and drying terracotta ones at that. I was never good enough about keeping the soil consistently moist and potted plants can't seek out water elsewhere, so I couldn't keep the mint alive. (It is invasive, so if you don't plant it in a container you'll have the opposite problem--you can't get rid of it.) This time I planted it in a plastic (i.e. moisture-retaining) self-watering planter and I put the drip line in it too. I haven't turned on the drip line yet because we've been getting rain, but the mint seems to be thriving; they were both half the size of the peppermint, on the left, when I bought them. The spearmint, on the right, seems to be doing especially well.



In my raised bed I have some collards I planted from seedlings Pam gave us in class; we haven't tried any yet, but now that the broccoli is gone, the collards are next on the menu. One of them is already starting to bolt, so we've gotta get 'em fast.



On the left you can see some garlic for green garlic. The rest of the bed is full of bunching onions for green onions (they never bulb), spinach, and--hopefully--carrots. I had expected the carrots to have sprouted by now, but I haven't seen any. In the pot by the lower left corner of the bed we have chives, and parsley in the black pot in the back. Along the far end of the bed, outside of it, there are some peas along the trellis. They're just getting started though, and not visible in this photo.