Sandown 2022 – year 2 – Listening to the heart

The weather this springs had been extremely cool and wet until the last week of June when it finally got warmer – summer at last! Very much needed for our veggies!

We started early in March seeding radishes, spinach, lettuce, corn salad, herbs, snap peas, and carrots as well as potatoes. Also transplanted some of the kale plants from out old beds and they grew amazingly.

March weather had been beautiful but since the end of March it had gotten tricky to plan anything. The wireworms had appeared in our new location so we did another application of stratiolaelaps (mites) and this had helped a bit within 2 weeks but they were prolific and are still around.

This year my friend and I are sharing 40ft or growing space and a raised bed each plus some space on „the berm“. So way “advanced” and it’s fun to figure everything out yourself. I am sure there will be steep learning curves, one of them is actually eating what you grow. No more grocery store visits with impulse shopping of whatever looks good. Eating what you grow is better, fresher, healthier, more satisfying, and ends up mostly being kale and broccoli and more kale, at least for now.

I had started a whole bunch of plants inside as we don’t have access to the greenhouse anymore, farmpreneurs only.

Had beautiful spring cleansing salads every day, all self foraged and/or harvested: dandelion leaves and flowers, daisies, arugula, radicchio, parsley, kale blossoms, and bitter cress.

Romanesco beauty all around:

And of course there are these dreadful flee beetles again. Every little green leaf had holes. Now it was just a matter of how quickly our plants could outgrow the beetles. We had tried covering some of our plants with white row cover fabric to protect our tiny plants from the beetles and wind but the plants seemed to suffer even more. So we took it off again.

We filled up the walking trenches with wood chips (no cedar) and dug in some mycelium from my little patch at home. If we are lucky we might grow some king straphoria. To get some mycelium fort your garden you can actually purchase it online!

Added tons of straw and planted a berry bed with blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries.

Our kale and broccoli had grown amazingly all through the winter and the garlic is getting there too.

Added some baby lettuces which completely disappeared, slugs, mostly! The same with the new arugula. When we put slug beer traps out we accidentally caught these beneficial beetles, granulated Carabid Beetles, Carabus granulatus. Ironically they might eat slugs as they prey on insects, worms, and snails. Their favourite food is earthworms which are also imported from Europe just like the beetle. How very sad, so the beer traps were gone the same day! Two cool websites for identifying insects are the „Bug Guide“ and „What’s that bug“, check them out if you want to learn more!