Green Harvests

 It is salad, broccoli and pea sesaon!  We have been eating these 3 things at almost every meal, with some of the bolting onions thrown in.  I just started a second round of salad seedlings and also got a second sowing of beets, fennel and kholrabi in.  Hope the harvests continue!

 It is amazing how fast the plants are growing!

peas at the beginning of june

peas in mid/late june

premium crop broccoli is the first to head up

lettuce at beginning of june

lettuce at end of june (after multiple pickings)

may update

Wow, I am a bad blogger.  It seems I have time for any 3 of the following things and not more: work, garden, cook/bake, bike/hike or blog.  Needless to say, blogging got put on the back burner, especially because I forget to lug my camera around.  We had really good weather in May!  Warm, sunny and a every so often rain, so I didn't have to hand water too much.

Planting:
Our last official frost date is May 15th, but the tomatoes were getting enormous and leggy, and the weather forecast on May 10th showed warm days for the next two weeks, so I went ahead and planted them.  Of course a week later on May 18-19th it got down to 0.2 degrees Celsius.  Close call, but the row cover seemed to help.  The nights were cold in the first half of the month and have just started staying around 10 Celsius.  Daytime highs are around 15-20 Celsius.  A week after the tomatoes, on May 20th the eggplants and peppers got planted, but they haven't put on any growth, probably because of the temperatures.  I will get a row cover on them to hopefully speed things along.  And on May 29th all the curcubits got planted (zucchini, cucumber, and winter squash).  I still need to assemble some type of cucumber trellis that stores well in the winter. One blueberry bush (bluecrop) was replaced because it didn't put on any new growth after an Easter freeze killed the young leaves.  I went ahead and 'splurged' on a slightly older plant this time from a local nursery and bought a miniature variety( top hat) to plant as well. 

Growth:
Some heavy rains followed by sun made the brassicas take off.  Around May 15th I watered all the plants with our homemade nettle tea, which I am sure helped.   The beets and fennel have started to bulb up.  The radishes bolted and had to be composted and the carrots are very very slowly coming along.  The peas started blooming around May 10th, but I have just got a few odd ones here and there.  I am hoping next week will be the 1st big pea harvest.  The favas are overwhelmed by aphids, and don't seem to be setting many pods (this could be because of the spacing or because of the aphids).  The onions have bulbed up, but unfortunately are infested with onion maggot, I'll have to use row cover or a net next year.  Also the drastic swings in temperature caused quite a few to bolt.  The rather small strawberry plants are slowly growing, and have even given us a couple of strawberries every few days.  They are a day neutral variety, so I hope they continue into fall.  The red currents have started ripening (starting May 28th)  and I hope in a few weeks at least some will be ready to eat.  The flavor is supposed to improve as they stay on the bush, but then I will have to share with the birds!  The broccoli has started to head (on May 25th) I hope to harvest the first next week and many side shoots thereafter.  The herbs have taken off and oh yeah....so have the weeds!

beets and fennel, lettuce and radishes

baby brassicas, lettuce and favas

carrots FINALLY have first set of leaves

Harvesting:
I have harvested rhubarb 4 times since April 15th, and about 800 grams each time.  The plants still look strong and are putting on lots of new growth (and surprisingly haven't sent up a flower stalk like the neighbors) so I think I can get in another 1 or 2 harvests before the summer solstice, the date where you are traditionally told to stop harvesting because of the oxalic acid amount and to help the plant store energy for next year.

We haven't purchased salad since May 1st!  the plants were slow to start off but seem to be doing really well in the sunny weather.  Hopefully they wont bolt anytime soon, but I got more seeds of all the salad varieties planted this week as replacements (especially of the heading varieties that have to be pulled after harvest)

A few snap peas and strawberries as well as onions when we need them.
We had to pull lots of mint that was taking over other herbs and tried an entire jar full for tea etc.
Elder flowers are in bloom, we are just going to make a little syrup this year as we don't use very much.

rhubarb and radishes

Cooking:
Other than our daily salads, I have had fun experimenting with the rhubarb, so far I have made
Rhubarb streusel cake
Rhubarb crumble
Rhubarb custard tart
Rhubarb mousse

Still on the list: a small batch of refrigerator jam from the last harvest to use immediately thereafter and possibly a souffle, pie and classic compote.


 Whew, that was a busy month, but now that all my seedlings are in the ground i am somewhat relieved!  On to the weeding, harvesting and processing phase!

Flowers:  the last of the daffodils and tulips are fading, and being replaced by borage, azalea and poppy

borage, a bee magnet

a wonderfully scented rhododendron(i think)

bee swarm

This was actually taken from our Apartment balcony when I noticed a swarm of bees on a tree in the courtyard.  We live on the 4th floor, so they were VERY high up.  I later was informed by my mother in law (she is a hobby bee keeper) that I should have called the fire department, as bee hives that swarm usually are looking for a safe place to live and rarely find one and die.  The fire department apparently can catch them and has a list of bee keepers that will take them.  Hope these guys made it somewhere safe!  I spotted them in the morning and they were still there went i went to bed at night.  They were gone the next morning, so were there for 15-25 hours.

Pentecost

Monday was a national holiday because of Pentecost, so we took advantage of the fantastic weather to do a bike tour from Zurich to Zug and back.  The first half of the tour was riding upstream along the Sihl river from Zurich to Sihlbrugg and then after a short stretch on a main road, we went uphill to catch a great view of the Zugersee.  Heading toward Zug we stopped at a lovely Kloster with a fabulous kitchen garden.  It was enourmous, and they had over 30 tomato varieties growing (under glass roofed tomato houses, of course, to prevent blight).  Along with using glass covered cold frames for seedlings, they had plastic foil high tunnels where they had finished harvesting the first round on florence fennel!  Amazing how early they were able to get a harvest.  It looked like they were selling transplants as well, and I probably would have bought one had we not been on bike with still a ways to go.  Then we passed through the town of Baar before arriving in Zug.  I promptly demanded a Zugerkirschtorte.  The first one we got was from cafe Meier, which was eaten on the steps next to the Train station and the second one we tried was from Confiserie Speck, which was eaten next to the lake.  I think I prefered the first one, as it was a bit less boozy and had a bit more icing to take away from the bite of the alcohol. (can you tell I am not a big drinker?)  Then we headed back to Zurich, which was considerably easier as the last half was downstream.  Definitely a moderate bike tour to do in the area!

planting grapes

One of the things I wanted in our garden was grapes.  They are hard to find organically AND locally, it is typically one or the other and the varieties sold these days tend to be selected for size and seedlessness not flavor.  Both me and my partner love the flavor (and the heavenly smell!) of muscat grapes and we researched a bit to find the best variety to grow organically.  We decided on Muscat Bleu (a red/blue variety) and Birntaler Muskat (a white/green variety).   Both were bare root plants that were mail ordered.  We ended up adding a terraced area along a retaining wall for them.  Hopefully this bed will continue to the walkway when we have time to prep it.  I would love to under plant the grapes with tulips or some other early flowering bulb.  Will this be a good pairing?

soon to be filled with grapes at which point supporting wires will be added and the 'wilderness' on the retaining wall will be scaled back.

why I love Zurich.  A lovely view of the alps from our Garden at dusk.

april update

We just got back from 2 wonderful, warm and sunny weeks in Sicily.  I guess we picked a good time to leave town because we were informed that the weather had been cold and rainy, even below freezing all of Easter weekend.  The peas, radishes and other plants accordingly stalled and look about the same.   Our transplants on the other hand really grew!  Thankfully our neighbor watered while we were gone, and the first thing I did after returning was pot up the tomatoes.  They did get a bit leggy as the lights were further that a few inches away, but I didn't want to ask our neighbor to deal with that too!  Sadly, the eggplants and some of the peppers have a green aphid problem.  They don't seem to be suffering yet, and the organic insecticide oil I sprayed on them seemed to do more damage than the actual aphids, so I will just let them be for another month and hopefully they will make great food for the ladybugs once planted outside.  The beets and fennel under row cover seem to be doing well, but the other brassicas and salad seem to have not grown much.

overwintered mache harvest right before we went on vacation as our last meal

April 15th was my other half's birthday, and of course it was a great excuse to harvest rhubarb from the garden to make a cake (mixed with store bought strawberries).  It was delicious.

first rhubarb harvest and random herbs

 On April 16th, I seeded the pumpkins, cucumber and squashes in newspaper pots and planted a flat of basil and thai basil seed.

mixed daffodils????

We have the loveliest purple tulips and old fashioned daffodils (white) blooming right now, but alas, I forgot to get a picture.  The lilacs are starting to form buds and the daffodils are fading.  By the way the dandelions are growing and blooming, I know busier times are just around the corner.

March update

I had a whole week free at the end of march, so used it to get some garden work done.  The first order of business was preparing a flower bed out of a grassy, sloped corner that was difficult do mow.  New beds sans power tools are hard work!  Of course I changed plans a few times in between, and got distracted and started re-leveling the pavers nearby along the way, but in the end I finished this terraced bed and got the blueberry bushes planted.  It looks a bit random, as i tried to use materials already on hand, but it will do for now.  We aren't allowed to use peat moss so I gathered lots of pine needles in the forest (even though online research tells me that they wont actually change the acidity of the soil) and added lots of compost to the planting hole.  We will only water with rain water and try a sulfur fertilizer to help decrease the pH. 

Our other big project was replacing some rotted posts that formed a retaining wall and pathway.  This was the most irritating project imaginable.  Trying to remove rotted wood that is confined on all sides by other structures and then trying to dig a hole under these confinements takes much longer than usual. 

Right before heading of on vacation I planted some transplants to make watering (at home) easier for our neighbor.  Fennel, salad, beet, savoy cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower got planted under cover even though it was a bit early and they were a bit small. I had too many lettuce seedlings so I gave them away to 3 other gardeners. 




The favas, radishes and peas have germinated, and I think I see the germination leaves on the carrots, although it is hard to tell.  The weather has been warm and sunny but nights have been cold.

hellebores

primroses

sprouting favas

lettuce seedlings

sprouting rhubarb

poor worm, i thought i was 'saving' him from my digging only to see that moments later he was taken by a lizard.