What happened in May.

Well, it's June and that means another month of growth is on the books and it's time to look back and see what we have learned before heading into another month.

We are already working on next years Chard Wars for May the 4th ( be with you ). The responses we  received were great. It's nice to know that our readers like to laugh with us.

A few hard lessons came to us in May with the loss of our celery and rainbow chard. We moved on and planted a few new plants... plants much better suited for our space.

We also picked a potato ( slightly prematurely ) and cooked our one tiny red potato to eat and share a recipe with our dear readers.

Our hope is that June brings even more success here on +The Littlest Farm as we head in to BBQ season we hope to be sharing more recipes from the garden with you.

Coping with loss

So, we are new to gardening in the Bay Area of California and are literally stumbling through this season trying to figure out what to do. We are so used to Oregon weather and throwing everything in the ground at the slightest hint of spring that we were not properly prepared for the tumultuous and unpredictable weather of our location. There was a sharp spike in the temperature with no rain and we lost several plants who went to seed prematurely.

Please join us in a moment of silence for our fallen plants.

Rainbow Chard- we hardly knew yee

Red Stalked Celery you were too beautiful for this world

Also among those lost were our daikon radishes and our snow peas are producing prematurely at a height of only 2 feet.

But instead of filling the void  on our plates with sadness we are promptly moving on to younger and better looking plants. Added to the fold are green and purple tomatillos , early girl tomatoes, piquillo pimento, orange and red bell peppers.

We are firm believers that if you don't fail you don't learn anything and boy are we learning a lot this year. It truly is an adventure in urban farming.

The Little Things

It's often overlooked in a lot of these blog posts how much little bits of work are put into the garden everyday. For us, Tuesdays and Saturdays are always jam packed with chores in and around the garden. There is ( of course ) weeding, watering, transplanting and contemplative squirrels to deal with  but there is also the little things.

Meg planting her Felicia Rose

(more to come on that rose later)

Refilling the slug traps.

(one for me... one for my sluggies)

I''m really starting to appreciate the maintenance for the first time. Getting out there, getting dirty, and tossing slugs & beer off this slimy mortal coil while Meghan waters with sniper like precision.  

Weeding the soon to be epic herb and flower garden.

Chewing on a bit of early harvest celery

The best of the little things happens tomorrow morning when we harvest the bulk of the radishes before work and get to share them with friends and family. 

And that squirrel thing that you have been wondering about since you read the first paragraph...

Contemplative Squirrel