Compared to the big push of April, May was a pretty light month for garden tasks. It rained, and rained, and rained, breaking records and meaning that we only had to turn on the irrigation once. Mostly that kept us inside to enjoy a more hands-off view of everything growing green and lush, but here are a few highlights of the time we did get to spend outside.

New fences. Last month we had a scare with one of our pups escaping out of the driveway gate and heading straight for a nearby busy road. That incident plus the addition of the chickens into our meadow area pushed us into separating off the garden, chicken meadow, orchard, and driveway from the more “backyard” part of the backyard. We’ve wanted to do it for awhile, but the last month of policing dogs away from fallen peaches and chicken poop sped up the timeline significantly and convinced us that even temporary fences would be valuable. Someday, they’ll be more beautiful and integrated: the courtyard fence boundary will become part of a proper walled kitchen garden, and the fence between the potting shed and barn will be a solid privacy wall with a double door to block off the fire pit from our parking area. All in good time. For now, the fences have already saved us a lot of yelling “NO!” from a futile distance.
Comfrey patch. If you are at all interested in organic gardening, you’ve probably heard of a concoction called “comfrey tea.” It is a supposedly very evil-smelling but super-nutritious brew made from the steeped leaves of the comfrey plant. Let it sit for a couple of weeks in a 5 gallon bucket in some out of the way spot, then pour it on your garden plants for a very low-cost organic feed. That’s our plan, anyway. Brian cleared a patch of ground near the barn, and I planted out 8 seedlings. I sowed seed as well, but I suspect that it all got washed away in the repeated deluges. We have hopes of being able to harvest some leaves for tea by the end of the summer, or at the very least, we’ve started a patch that will help us be more sustainable for coming seasons in the garden.
Succession sowing of flowers and greens. Back in February, we set a goal of trying to eat greens only from our own garden for the rest of the year. It’s not so hard in the cooler months to get a good harvest of salad greens, but with the weather getting really hot here in the summer, we’re curious to see if we can do it. The secret will all be in the succession sowings with repeated replanting as the plants will go to seed and fade out much more quickly in heat. A few weeks ago, I sowed the third wave and will have those plants ready to go out in a couple of weeks, if needed. It’s all an experiment this season to figure out the timing. We’re still harvesting kale from a winter planting, while the more tender greens from that same time frame bolted long ago. I also sowed a second wave of flower seedlings this month - more of the same annuals planted out in April: cosmos, zinnias, and marigold. I’m curious to see the timeline on them as well, and I’ll plant them out as soon as some spots open up as the spring bloomers like snapdragons and orlaya finish. As a fun bonus, I also started some rhubarb from seed, and those babies have mostly gone into 1 gallon pots in the nursery area for observation. Rhubarb is notoriously hard to keep alive in the south, but I really love it, so I’m giving it a try.
Tomato propagation. A local farmer friend shared a trick for propagating tomatoes that I hadn’t heard. Because they root so easily, any small shoots that sprout in the crotch between the main stem and a lateral branch can be snapped off and rooted - this is good for the structure of the plant while not sacrificing fruit production. I took about 20 shoots a week ago, and many of them have already started to grow in their new pots. In my area of SC, tomatoes are prone to multiple pests; the one we’ve had the worst issue with is called septoria leaf spot, a fungal disease which lives in the soil and is virtually impossible to completely prevent. The past couple of years, it has been a battle to control the disease long enough to get a good harvest before throwing in the towel. This year, I’ll have another wave of seedlings in the wings for when that happens, so we can stretch the tomato harvest (hopefully) even into autumn.
Harvesting. The biggest yields this month have been sugar snap peas, greens, and roses, but there have been a lot of other things going as well. We’ve finally started to eat a few radishes (I sowed them late), sporadically picked strawberries, routinely garnish with fresh herbs, and many other plants have started to bloom. It’s just hard to beat the English roses, and May is their month of glory here. I think that all the rain and cooler temperatures prolonged the pea harvest, because we’ve eaten them at almost every meal for weeks now, but the vines are finally starting to turn yellow and die back.
Butterfly bush bed. Behind the potting shed, there used to be a stretch of nothing. Last fall I planted some homeless day lilies (there are somehow always homeless day lilies or homeless irises) and a few weeks ago decided to add some butterfly bushes that I’d bought on clearance for $5 apiece. It might not be a permanent bed, but it meant I could move those impulse-buy butterfly bushes out of the nursery and get them into the ground where we could enjoy them for awhile until we completely rethink that area. They’re already starting to bloom!
Chicken update. The girls are thriving. It gives us so much joy to see them out in the meadow, and most of them are quite friendly, coming right up to the fence when we approach the coop. We’ve started to train them that a shaking bag means run quick for some meal worms, in preparation for letting them do some free-ranging when they’re full grown.
Natural mosquito spray. Last summer we paid a company to come and spray every few weeks throughout the summer. We opted for their natural pet/child-safe option and asked them only to spray the perimeter of our property with the most dense sheltering growth. We never allowed spray near the garden, house, or anything flowering. Even with such a limited target area we noticed huge improvement in the mosquito population, but we still had to pay full price for the service each time. This year we wanted to try spraying a natural option ourselves both to save money and to be in complete control of the application, so I bought a gallon of Mosquito Barrier concentrate and a pump sprayer that we’ve dedicated to use only for this purpose. Our plan is just to add it to the regular weekend yard and garden chores, but it’s been so rainy the past month that we only have been able to spray twice so far this season. Now that the forecast predicts a lot less rain, we’ll be able to judge better how it truly works, and I’ll share our results at the end of the summer.
What’s next. I just ordered more seeds from Floret. But in my defense, they’re for a different family project, not just for me. A mixture of foliage and annual grass fillers will be the next wave of starts once space opens up under my grow lights, and as always, I’m curious to see how they do here. Floret does a good job of being upfront about climate differences and limitations (the farm is in WA), and I chose a selection of things that are supposed to thrive in heat. Shopping for plants online is kind of like shopping for clothes - you have to be realistic about what is and isn’t going to work for your particular body type, and what margins are worth even trying to push. Also very near on the horizon is a baby. Our son is due June 24, so I fully expect to combine the June and July garden updates as our attention will be very divided soon.

Garden Update | May 2020