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Our garden is drinking up the warm spring rain that has been falling over the past few days. The young tomato plants (just transplanted into the garden) have perked up, and the peas seem to be growing even as we watch. We are now picking all the collard greens we can eat, plus a few more to give away. We are also harvesting a good deal of lacinto kale, and a few leaves of a beautiful plant called red orach. Red orach can be used like spinach, but its tender leaves are a stunning shade of pink. So far, it seems to be growing well, and has been untroubled by pests. Kevin and I have never grown red orach before, but we may well be planting more of it in seasons to come.

Today, I slipped outside between showers of rain and constructed a frame out of bamboo and twine for the runner beans to climb up. After that, it was time to plant the bean seedlings in the damp earth next to the new structure. The variety of runner beans we’ve chosen is an heirloom with the colourful name, “painted lady.” The flowers should be two-tone red and white. We hope that they will make a beautiful and tasty display next to the path that leads to our front door.

Lacinto kale and red orach picked fresh for lunch

Just planted: painted lady runner bean seedling

One of my favourite jobs here on the farmlet is starting seeds for our gardens. Now that spring is here, we want to grow all kinds of seedlings to fill the garden beds. Every morning, I rush out to see whether any more seedlings are pushing their heads out of the soil. We are hardly planting any seeds directly into our garden, because the mulch we are using is too coarse to be good for starting seeds in. Starting the seeds inside also prevents the loss of seeds and very young seedlings to birds, slugs and other hungry critters.

The sunny window in our living room has turned into a seed-raising area. It’s become so full that I decided to build a cold frame to start more seeds in. I constructed the cold frame out of an old window, some scraps of wood, and a bit of black polythene. All the materials were scavenged from our various debris piles, except for the nails, so this project was not too damaging for our wallets or for our earth! I’m not much of a builder. Any self-respecting carpenter would cringe at the bent nails and crooked corners that comprise the cold frame. . . but it’s functional enough, and the plants don’t seem to mind the odd bent nail here and there.

We have had a lot of fun in previous months choosing seed out of several different seed catalogues. We have selected heirloom seeds, and hope to save seed for future crops, as far as we are able. Since this is our first year, we’ll be watching carefully to see which varieties grow and produce well in our garden.

Today I planted three kinds of cherry tomato (yellow, red, and orange), greenfeast peas, essene flax, leeks, green onions, strawberry spinach, pepinos, sweet basil, zucchini, zinnias, borage, and radishes. I wonder who thought up such a delicious name as “greenfeast pea.” We are both hoping that they will taste as good as they sound.

What else have we been up to today?

Well, we chatted for quite a while with a kind neighbour who brought over some seed potatoes for us to plant. It was certainly nice to be able to give him a big bag of avocados to take home.

In town yesterday we had stocked up on meat. We bought a bulk pack from the butcher, so today I re-organised our little freezer, dividing the meat up into usable portions, labelling it, and adding it to our cache of frozen goodies. We are very happy with the fridge-freezer we inherited when my parents moved recently. As well as including a small freezer, this fridge has a “five star” energy rating, which means it’s much more energy-efficient than the fridge we had before.

We had run out of bread yesterday, so today it was time to bake again. We now have a nice big loaf of sourdough bread in the cupboard.

The warm, rainy conditions we are having are ideal for our newly planted seedlings. Alas, these conditions are also perfect for slugs. . . and they are oozing their slimy bodies over to our gardens as fast as they can to feast on the tender young plants. We like to share our food, and wouldn’t begrudge them a few mouthfuls, but their collective intent seems to be fixed on total annihilation of all our kale and bok choi seedlings. This we cannot tolerate, so we are mustering all our resources to find a solution that does not involve slug bait or other toxic chemicals.

Our first line of defense is beer traps. Since Kevin has been brewing beer at home, we have plenty of dregs left over from the bottom of each batch. I’ve been burying plastic containers up to their rims in the garden, and then filling them with left-over beer. The slugs slither in for a taste of beer, and never come out again. This method has been somewhat successful. Slugs are certainly going into the beer traps in large numbers, but there are still more of them on the plants.The second solution we’ve tried goes as follows: Late at night, I don my combat gear — wooly hat and cardigan, head lamp, and trusty gumboots. Arming myself with a bucket of hot soapy water, I head for the garden to pick slugs off our plants. At first I thought I might keep a tally of how many slugs I vanquished on these forays, but I quickly lost count. This method is certainly quite effective. At the moment, it’s probably the only thing stopping our bok choi plants from being eaten to the ground. It’s pretty labour-intensive though, and as our garden gets bigger, I start to wonder if I will have to stay out there all night.

What else can we do? I’ve heard that if you eat half a grapefruit and leave the peel upside-down on the lawn, slugs will crawl under it and can then be disposed of. We plan to try this. We also want to get hold of some copper to make slug barriers for some of the most sensitive plants. Copper is on the shopping list for our next trip to town.

Slugs aside, we are really happy with how things are going in the garden. Today we made the first of several bamboo frames for our peas to climb up. I’m already dreaming of having fresh sugarsnap peas in our lunchtime salads! We were pleased with the first pea frame, but Kevin thinks the design is somewhat flawed, and that we are unlikely ever to have peas in our salad. He suspects that without the addition of barbed wire or an electric fence, he’ll have gobbled up all the sugarsnap peas before they make it to the lunch table.