YAY! Tomato Weather!

It's another "no touchy" day

Pain woke me at 5am. Vicodin helped me sleep. I take maybe 6-8 Vicodin per year. It usually doesn't help much, but I needed to try something.
When I woke, I had double vision from the Vicodin and had to go back to bed. I thought I would have to cancel everything today. I made it to my appointment and getting out of the house cheered me up.
I'm back home. I haven't figure out a way to not hurt (can't sit, stand, or lie on either side).
I'll have to do some garden time and water before it gets hot tomorrow, but it may not be tonight.

I'm sweating my onions off over here

OK, this is really for my onion tops.
I pulled several onions to thin the patch, cut the tops leaving about 4 inches of bulb and stem. I replanted the bulbs in a new, empty space with a little bit of stem above ground and watered them.
The exact same thing can be done by slicing onions into slices but you'll have more sulfur stink (bad breath, watering eyes) to cook off.

1. Cut onion tops into short lengths. 
2. Toss with olive oil. (You can also add balsamic vinegar at this point.)
3. Sprinkle with salt. 
4. Spread evenly on foil-lined sheet at least 2 inches thick. 
5. Cook low (250F) and slow. This will cook out the sulfur that makes for stinky breath and watering eyes.

Wilted (floppy) and light carmel brown - add to quick cooked fresh vegetables for an element of deeper flavor.  I like to eat them just like this as a side dish- onions are a vegetable after all.

Smushy (no real structure, very limp) - mash with a fork (or in a food processor/blender) into a smooth-ish spread consistency. Add more olive oil if needed. Use the same way you would use roasted garlic smush. This will be sweeter, greener and milder in flavor.
* Add Worchestershire to the smush for a more savory flavor.
* Sprinkle smush with a little bit of lemon juice, herbs or both. Mix in.
* Use as a spread for sandwiches.
* Stir into pasta sauces (red, white or otherwise)
* Stir into mashed potatoes, cooked rice, soup, couscous

A Sunny Day in the Trenches

I love the way the cedar planks lining the beds looks. Better yet, the plants seem to like them.

News From The Trenches

Baby birds be damned, I ran errands today. I'm trying to feel empowered by being a 2 legged creature near the top of the food chain, but when I got home, a sparrow was on the ground next to my parking spot looking kind of pissed that I drove away with her babies and nest in my car. I feel so bad!

I decided to firm up the sides of the trenches I dug between the beds. I bought cedar fence pickets (on sale!). Voila! very pretty, tidy looking beds.
Beans: Green beans are putzy. Long beans are growing up and sending out shoots.
Carrots: Finally sprouted, but under 1 inch tall.
Cucumbers: Vines are showing promise. Slow to grow.
Flowers:  The purchased flowers have re-flowered. The sweet peas and other climbers have sprouted. Sunflowers are growing tall and fast.
Herbs: Cat mint is going crazy and is ready to flower. Cilantro and dill (volunteer) took some big hits when I dug out the trenches, but I'm sure they'll come back quick. Herbs in the baskets aren't growing. Lemon grass is fantastic. Chives are making slow progress. Leeks are doing nicely. The greens on the garlic lay flat to the ground as though broken, but they've stayed green - I'll replant.
Onions: Red and yellow onions are growing really well. The greens can be cut and the onions are ready to harvest as scallions.
Peas: Snow peas are in harvest and still flowering. Plants from seeds are growing nicely.
Peppers: Flowers and unripe babies.
Salad Greens: Contained have grown over 6" and are ready to eat. The 3" plants were totally flattened and destroyed by rain. One row that's a bit protected is growing well.
Tomatoes: Flowers and unripe babies.
Squash: HUGE blossoms. Butternut squash are slow. Yellow squash blossoms are almost too big to be yellow squash.

It rained again today, but just enough to wet the ground. I watered a bit to settle the soil into the new boxes. I'm still waiting for a long stretch of temps over 80F to get everything moving.

No Rain!!!

It didn't rain yesterday! Not a drop! After running all of my errands, it was getting late in the day, and I decided to dig the trenches before going into the house.

The trenches are in the same place as the boards were, but a bit wider (shovel width). I crumbled the soil and scattered it onto the top of the beds. The deeper soil is so nice and black and full of worms. Nadya, a neighbor a few plots down, bought dog-eared fence slats (the wide flat bits) and pushed them against the sides of her beds. I think I might do that as todays get-out-of-the-house project.

Except for my new passengers.

While getting an oil change that turned into major ($700+) car repairs, the mechanics discovered my car is chirping. They brought me into the shop to show me the broken spring in the front suspension and point out the baby bird chirps coming from under the trunk.

On the lift, we could see an area in the rear, drivers side corner of the body frame that the momma bird could have climbed into and nested. "See, you've been carrying around those babies away from their momma. She's probably looking for them. You've got those babies away from their momma. She's probably freaked out looking for them." *sigh* *cringe* I'm a kidnapper.

I looked it up on the net, and there isn't a whole lot of information about what to do after the eggs have hatched. I'm pretty sure the instigators are sparrows. When they hatch, they stay in the nest for about 2 weeks. They may be ready to leave soon, so I'm going to keep driving. No extra food or anything for freaked out Momma because I don't want any of them to get the idea that my car is super-convenient. I hate the idea of it though.

Don't Even Bother

My cat (Emma) did that thing, where she runs around bouncing off of things like she's possessed, but part of it was bouncing off of me. At 5am. Run into the bedroom, jump on the bed, jump on my chest, turn, run away. Jump on the bed, jump onto the shelves next to the bed, chase tail, jump off shelf onto my chest, run away. All while cat grumbling.

I got up for a few hours, and eventually went back again. I finally woke up around 2:30p and the day was pretty much over. I had a few errands and before I'd finished, it started to rain again. I didn't even bother to check the garden today. The shovel for re-trenching is still in the back seat of the car.

Now I'm in really cozy jammies, I've planted myself on the couch, and I'm done for the day.

Yesterday the chiropractor touched my fibro spots (they aren't always so sensitive) and my brain is suffering fibroPTSD. I'm supposed to go back on Friday morning - other parts are crooked and locked up - but I'm already getting nervous. It's so sensitive today, even sitting up against the sofa pillows hurts. I'm going to have to take some pills and go back to sleep.

No touchy.

Rainy Soltice

I checked on things this morning before the rain. The small salad greens are matted to the soil - totally flattened. I'm going to start them (again). I'm not sure it's going to be OK for them until all of this rain stops. My carrots haven't sprouted at all and it's been weeks. I've still got soybean gaps.

Today was an ELL tutoring session with Zhenfang. She brought me seeds that are either coriander or a lettucy-green plant she gave me to try yesterday. I'm going to start these seeds indoors. It will help me figure out what they are, and I hope they'll last better than they might in the muck outside.


Happily, the tomato plants are still making babies. Anatoli is happy and has asked/hinted in his very broken English that he wants some because I have so many plants and they are already bearing fruit. I've also gotten requests for green tomatoes from two non-gardeners, I've promised some to Wyman (lives on my floor) and a new guy in the building named Ron.

The thunderstorm last night brought us more than an inch of rain according to my garden gauge.  It was overcast most of the day, and rained again at 2 p.m. Shortly after, we had severe weather and tornado warnings in this county (Hennepin) and the surround.

I fell asleep for a few hours (I sleep a lot), so I missed any excitement that may have happened. It's coming on 8:45p. The clouds are parting and rays of sunshine are beaming down between the gaps.

The parting of the clouds, and the sunbeams are more impressive than this. Cellphone
camera into the sunset does not a pretty picture make. Retail lights are coming on.
Ach, suburbs. I try to not look down at the shops. Sky only for me.

 I've just checked the forecast. We'll get more rain after midnight, showers and thunderstorms tomorrow, and some rain on Thursday. We won't have 80F temps until next week. I stopped by a hardware store today and came home with a shovel. I'm going to re-dig the trenches in the garden a little wider and a little deeper.

My apartment overlooks the garden (from the 12th floor) and though I'm too high to see the garden without a stretch, I can hear the neighbors working (hammering stakes today), wind chimes, and birds.

My view from above.

It Smells Like Rain. Again.

The soil in our garden is strange to me. Instead of black, rich topsoil like that where I grew up (at least 2 feet deep), the garden soil is really sandy with dirt that is more like silt.

When I dug a hole for my water storage, I got almost 15 inches before I hit a 1.5 inch layer of sand. Below that was a dirt layer where I've found insulated wire and pipes. Below that is a compacted clay mix. I came across enough buried pipe that I had to stop digging. I'm not sure what was in this spot before the building was made in 1981, but the stuff left behind is under our yard and garden; our top 1-2 feet of soil are a cover job for the construction junk below.

Sand collected on the surface of the soil after the rain.

When it rains, the rain will flatten the surface of the soil. When it's smoothed out, the water rolls off instead of absorbing and pool in low spots. The silt gets washed off the high spots and sand is left behind. Since I've trenched a bit  between my beds, the trenches fill with the silty dirt, I scoop it up and put it back on the bed and mix it in after the rain.

If it has rained, we all go out with hoes and small cultivators to scratch up the surface of the soil. If we don't break up the sand on the surface, it turns really hard like concrete, which makes the water situation worse. The turning of the surface also helps with weeds, and gives the surface texture to attempt to keep the soil and water in place.

I've got two problems. The rain keeps washing away the top of the soil. The other problem is the overcast cool. We really need a stretch of warm, sunny days to dry things up and put them to rights. The plants just won't grow when it's this cool.

A shiny, sandy crust after the rain. Seeds trying to break out.

The latest soybeans I planted are coming in very slowly. Many of the first set of seed I planted rotted from the cool damp. This second set is barely breaking through and there are still a lot of bald spots. I can't scratch up this surface because I don't want to disrupt the seeds that haven't emerged yet or the root systems of the very small stuff.

According to the news, Minnesota farms have had twice the amount of rain we'd normally have and the crops are half as tall. Standing water is starting to drown the plants and hay that could be harvested can't be because heavy equipment would get stuck in the mud. It's too early to say the crops are badly damaged, but more rain is worrisome. Though I live in the suburbs now, I grew up listening to KBEW in the morning before school with Paul Harvey and the daily commodity prices. Somehow crop status was burned into my brain as a measure to determine if all is right with the world.

The rain is supposed to start in the next few hours and it is supposed to rain on and off for at least three more days. Severe weather is also possible.

Think good thoughts for us.

Afternoon Delight

The birds seem to have that lovin feeling lately. They are all over each other, there is a lot of chasing going on, and some birds will fly into the garden and land right next to us to avoid being chased by others.

Yesterday, I got this picture of a goldfinch.

This picture was taken with my cell phone camera. This little bird kept following me around when I walk walking the perimeter of the garden. I was finally able to catch a picture over my left shoulder. 

Last evening was goldfinch, today it's sparrows. Love is in the air!

Tools In A Bucket

This year, all of the tools I use except my hoe and my cultivator fit into a 5 gallon bucket which sits discreetly near the lean-to in the middle of my garden. Too close to the fence or inside the garden shed and it could be/would be stolen.

Last year, I had very little money to buy implements. This year, that's not a problem, but I've found that for a garden my size, these tools, the cloches, and the arbor stuff are all I need.

This is my stuff:

Climber mesh, garden wire, and a mesh bag of zip ties.
Sprinkle plant food, ball of cotton string (recycled from a broken mop head), pint basket full of seed packets and liquid plant food powder.
Two pairs of garden gloves, a drawstring reusable bag, kid's garden shovel, garden fork, scissors, sprayer nozzle, snake-tongue-tool-thingy, trowel (I think, the little pointed shovel thing), terra cotta plant saucer (water for the birds), organic wheat grass seed (grass for the cat),  bulb planter, knee pads, and a hacksaw.

Cloches on a stick - perfect storage until winter.

Arbor

Now: brown = wood, yellow = mesh, grey = PVC

Anything in my garden has to come down in the fall and be stored until next year.Whatever stuff I have in my garden has to come down at the end of the season. It also has to be easy to store in a small mount of space. If I could build something permanent, I'd be rockin it out. I hope that the arbor, cloches, and my tools will fit in the garden shed. If not, I'll keep them in my apartment. Either way, I want to keep things small for storage.


I put this together in one afternoon. I planned on burying the uprights at least 12" deep, but soil composition and the tools I have made that  too hard. The uprights are 8' long, so they couldn't be driven into the ground. To help stability, garden stakes were driven into the ground right next to the uprights and they were bound to each other. This substitute was almost as good as planting the uprights themselves. Also, the whole thing is tied to the fence around the garden which my neighbor Alexi hammered in really deep.

My last aim at strength and stability was to plant giant sunflowers along the east/fence side of the arbor. The sunflowers could make things too shady, but I'll have to wait and see.

Center Cross and Top

Zip Ties are MAGIC! Only $5 for 650!

North Side

East Side

West Side  of the "Lean-To"

East Side of the "Lean-To"

Northside Climbers: The wind twisted things a bit.
Those two verticals should be lined up.

Having a tall arbor means I can "hide" things above eye-level.
My extra trim fence hangs from the top. No one noticed the
bird feeder for days - not a popular choice with everyone at
the garden.

June 17, 2010: 39 Minnesota Tornadoes in One Day

One year ago today, a huge string of storms tore up parts of Minnesota.

This house was picked up and moved by the storm. Those are
the front steps. The front door used to be right next to them. The
house moved, not the steps.

We're all very lucky there were only three deaths. The town of Wadena was hit hard - 232 homes of 4000 were destroyed or severely damaged. Farms were hit and emergency services had to follow the path of the storm from farm to farm to check on the well being of the people who may or may not have been home at the time.

That's the scariest to me - being trapped in your barn under stuff, being in a house without a basement - and no one knows you're there. There were stories of livestock picked up in the storm and found dead dropped onto roads and in fields.  Newly planted fields were wrecked with debris that would ruin expensive farm machinery - it had to be cleaned up before the crops were too tall, removed completely, and all that done without significant damage to the crops.

This was a house. The woman here was killed when the storm hit.
She didn't have a basement at her place.

I went to the closest coffee shop to use the Internet to find out what was happening in my hometown - hit hard with hail and less than 10 miles from several tornado touchdowns. Phones and cable internet may have been out, but "tethered" devices like smartphones and cell phones kept people in touch: who was accounted for, who was missing, and where is the flooding, hail, or wind damage.

So here's to good thoughts to last year's June 17 Tornado folk. You've made it through a year! It just gets better.

A funnel cloud dropping on a farm.

[Side Note: Solitude in the midst of life threatening danger is the cornerstone of the social phenomenon known as "Minnesota Nice" which breaks down to - never show negativity or dislike to anyone because at some point, your car might break down, you might be trapped in a snow drift, or a tornado may tear up your house, and you don't want the only other person in the middle of nowhere with you to dislike you. A society built that completely rejects "no" as a method of communication is a strange one, but someone will always hold the door open for you when your hands are full. You know you're in Minnesota when...you try to go for a walk and everyone stops to offer you a ride.]

My Little Babies, First Born

 

Neato Local Fancy Gardens

This is NOTHING I aspire to. Too pretty. My garden is simple, edible and has very few flowers. My garden doesn't have much time to grow. These are wonderful places for inspiration. They are all about beauty and nature.

Como Park Zoo and Conservatory 1225 Estabrook Drive Saint Paul, MN 55103









Minnesota Landscape Arboretum 3675 Arboretum Drive, Chaska MN 55318



 

The Normandale Japanese Garden  9700 France Avenue Bloomington, MN 55431

 
Walker Art Center Minneapolis Sculpture Garden  750 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403

Vertical Gardening for Dads

I was scanning blog titles about gardening and I came upon "Vertical Gardening for Dads." Hey! I've got climbers! My garden goes vertical!

It's not quite what I expected, but it looks terrific! I think this is a very cute way to display air plants. Instructions are at the link. There are some obvious "containers" for houseplants, but this makes me think, what else could I plant in?

Oh, the world of garden crafts! I'm not talking about hand-painted signs with the names of herbs, I'm talking nifty, cool, groovy stuff. I've got a new search target!

Grown UP tomatoes

I've got one tomato plant I've been confused about. It's my pear tomato plant. I bought it from Pflaum's. I'm not sure if it spent too much time in a cloche, but all of the growing has happened at ground level. Instead of growing up and branching out, it's sending branches out low on the plant. It looks like a little round tomato bush ball.

Tomato ball on the left. Grown UP tomato on the right.

I've been following Desperate Gardener and for Tomato Tuesday this week. She wrote about pruning tomato plants. I've been thinking about cutting off some of the horizontal stalks that are coming off the tomato ball that are using plant energy to grow out, to redirect the plant energy to going up, but they are thick, heavy branches and I don't want to kill the thing. It's already got flower buds and I'm afraid fruit that low to the ground will rot or attract pests.

After reading her post, I went for it! I trimmed up the tomato ball and suckers on the other plants. I knew this is what needed to happen, but it's nice to have confirmation from someone else. Codependent gardening? Nah, deferring to someone who knows more and has a grandma to back her up.

The Wild Ones: Dill, Mint, Cilantro, Lemon Grass, and ???

Since ours is a community garden next to a park, a lot of things get churned into the soil when it's tilled every fall and spring, and assorted other things blow in all season.

Last year, it took me a while to identify the volunteer plants that we've got growing in the garden. Since they grow in the straight line trenches I made for my seeds, I can't always tell what's to keep. So far, I need them to grow to a certain size before I can tell what they are. I've asked Anatoli, Zhenfang, and Alexi to help me identify weeds, but sometimes we run into a language barrier. Alexi and I get pretty close.  When I ask if a plant is "good" or "bad," Alexi tends to judge the condition of the plant (healthy v. non-healthy). He calls the volunteer plants "wild." I've tried to teach him the word "weed," but it's not working so far. I don't think he can quite hear the difference between "wild" and "weed." "Can you eat it?" is greeted with a shrug because, well, anything can be eaten.

A lot of the wild plants could be herbs at their early stages. Zhenfang doesn't care for most herbs. She has chives and cilantro in her own garden, so I've given her different herbs to smell (maybe she'll recognize them?) but after grossing her out with basil, she won't go near them. Last year, she was helping me in my garden, and she started pulling out my lemon grass. I wanted her to smell it and look at the color so she could tell what it was and not pull it, but she refused. If I ask her if a seedling is "good" or "bad," she answers based on her own tastes. The herbs are almost always counted as bad, but she also calls onions, sweet peppers and potatoes bad. She knows they are edible but she wouldn't eat them, and she doesn't think I should eat them either. When she sees me come home with groceries, sometimes she'll poke around the bag to see what I've got that will meet her approval.  Too many boxes. She's not happy I bring home boxes and Coca-Cola.

This kind of secondary leaf means it's a kind of
squash or cucumber. In this case, it's zucchini.

This year, the "wild" seedlings are over an inch tall and have gotten to their secondary leaves, so I can tell what they are. Garden plant sprouts emerge with two leaves (primary leaves) on a stem.  They all look the same to me. I have to wait for the second set of leaves to show up to identify the plant.

The "wild ones" in this year's garden are dill, mint, and coriander/cilantro. All three are very popular in our little community, so really the only nuisance is that it grows wherever it wants.

The dill is sprouting up everywhere, gets more than 3 feet tall, goes to seed, and cycles back. There are constant crops of dill all summer. I found out that my Russian and Ukrainian neighbors save the seeds and scatter them by the hand full every spring. Valentina kept a huge a tin of seeds and offered to share. I passed on it. Even still, I've got wisps of dill growing. Sofia says that "Russian" dill tastes better than "American" dill. Alexi has said it's really good in soup. There is a "summer borsch" that was referred to last year. It seems to be heavy in herbs - mint, dill, and a lemony leaf that grows on a bush 4 feet tall. I've got to get that recipe.

I haven't planted my mint in containers (cat mint and spearmint). It can spread pretty far on it's own, but since the garden freezes hard and gets tilled every spring, I thought it would be destroyed and not bother the neighbors. Volunteer mint is all over my garden this year. It doesn't look like the mint I've planted, which is kind of bushy. This is a leggy, creeper mint with darker, shinier leaves. Last year, Valentina gave me some cuttings, she told me it was "Russian" mint. Tasty stuff. When Zhenfang saw it in my garden last year, she went nuts - she wanted some! I gave her several cuttings and she was over the moon. It's back.

Cilantro (corriander) popped up in my garden this year. Last year, my planning was really off and by late summer my garden was pretty bare. The waste of space lead Zhenfang to bring me seeds and seedlings to put in the empty spots. In one section of the garden, she scratched the soil and scattered coriander. It seems that some of it survived to live again this year. It's not growing in places I want it, but I'll let it get big and go to seed and replant the seeds where I want them. I should get several harvests this year.

Last year, the lemon grass I planted was just a curiosity - an expensive exotic I wasn't very sure about. I let it do what it would and it spread quickly. It grew nice and tall, and whenever I brushed past it, the air smelled of lemon grass. I got a recipe for a kind of Thai iced tea made from lemon grass and a little ginger - very nice. In the fall, I wanted to pull it up and dry some for winter, but I didn't realize that it's a rhizome. When it was spreading across the surface of the soil, it was spreading underneath and got some really deep, woody roots. I discovered that rhizomes like lemon grass and Mexican bamboo can do really well in Minnesota. This year, I buried a plastic, tight weave basket, filled it with soil and put the lemongrass seedlings in there. I was a bit worried that I'd stunted them, but I noticed tonight that they are growing gangbusters. Since I planted them near the walking path, I'll still get the lovely scent and this fall all I'll need to do is dig up the basket. No wild lemon grass this year and I hope to have some rhizomes to give to Felicia H in BE.

There is still one kind of plant growing in my garden that I can't identify. The leaves look like they might be salad greens, but last year, I let it grow it sprouted golf-ball-sized yellow flowers. When it gets a little bigger, I'll take some pictures and send them to the University of Minnesota horticulture folks for an identity check.

What kind of wild stuff grows in your yard/garden? Any surprises?

Rainin'

Yesterday, there was a deep rumble in the sky that promises more rain than electricity in the storm that was coming. I'd been sleeping most of the day (thanks fibro) so I was glad to find a reason to go out in the rain.

I have no idea why people run to escape the rain. In a little rain, it seems kind of hysterical to run away from it. In heavy rain, one minute more isn't really going to change things; wet is wet. I've never been terribly particular about my hair or my outfit, maybe that's the rub. There is nothing about any measure of downpour that will make me run from it. I love the rain.

Today I had more energy than I have had in days. I had an appointment and ran errands (alien-abduction-like lost time in the craft/sewing store). First the radio talked about a freak storm, then I could see it coming when I left the grocery store. I did my daily garden check before the rain came, but I wound up scrambling to get the cloche back on the delicate plants.  The wind had turned wicked and I did not want to lose any plants. I've already lost 2 tomatoes to wind this year. Last year 60mph winds (tornado nearby) literally spun my bush green beans and pulled them out of the ground. Today, I didn't have enough cloche to cover everything - it felt like I was choosing one child over another.

I checked the rain gauge, and we had 2.5 inches of rain before this storm even had a chance to start!

The storm's passed and I can see the sunset happening. I'm going to go un-cloche the kiddies once again so I don't smother the poor darlings. I'm gonna check that rain gauge too.

Katie and Ayden's Garden

Pictures of my plants so far

West Side Climbers

North Side Climbers

East Side Climbers

Soybeans

Sunflowers

Brussel Sprouts (I love 'em)

Salad Mix

Pictures of The Land

Everything in the garden is coming along beautifully. Most of the hard work is done. Gardens are planted, fences and climbing structures are assembled and most plants have stakes. Now it's time to watch everything grow.  We'll have our evening watering sessions, and our sit-around-and-swat-bugs sessions, and our strolls around The Land to see who is growing what and how it's coming along.

Right now there is a lot of wood and yarn on The Land. Every tomato and pepper plant will be staked, either on its own, or staked with the plant next to it. We get at least 1000 staked plants each summer. Once things grow up, the wood won't even be visible.

Gregori and Sofia are the only ones who still have a lot of covers in use. They have a hard time getting around, but I think the covers are part of their secret. Sofia is the garden president. She's in charge of collecting the money, assigning plots, and getting the garden tilled. She is also a very good gardener.

Last year, Gregori told me when he picked his 602nd cucumber. He keeps notes on his calendar to record how much he's harvested. On the building side of their garden, they have herbs and plants they will use on a daily basis, but most of their garden is a "canning" garden. Sofia will preserve the tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and beets and they will live it up on goodies all winter. The European folks tend to have canning gardens.

We also have  "kitchen" gardens. Kitchen gardens produce is eaten throughout the season. Anatoli calls my garden a kitchen garden, but since the only thing ready to eat right now is onion tops, I don't think it's quite there yet.
<<< Now this is a kitchen garden. My Asian neighbors have kitchen gardens, and they are already harvesting. Also, their gardens are just beautiful. The plants never get big because they are harvested when they are what we might call "baby". Every plot has what I call a "nursery garden" where they start seeds.  Every couple of weeks, seedlings are moved from the nursery to a plot that has already been harvested and everything stays in rotation. The seedlings are replanted with a handful of manure, and everything stays healthy and growing. With all of the baby plants, most of the watering is done by hand instead of hose.

The color is a little wonky, but between these climbers
are a baby red leafed lettuce-like crop. Strings will be
dropped from the upper support for the climbers to use
and the salad greens will grow in rotation.

Even the space between the plants get used. Since everything is planted in stages, little plants are planted between small plants and they rotate in harvest. Or climbers are planted first, so they can get some good roots going, then the daily harvest stuff gets tucked in between.  I'm really impressed, and I'm learning loads, but my reality is:
1. I don't eat much and a large portion of that is supposed to be protein (I take vitamins for "nutrition."
2. A high rotation kitchen garden sustains 2 harvests of delicate, "baby" produce, that should be eaten soon after harvest. Can't do it, hard to transport it to share.
3. Since these are greens that are Asian varieties, non-Asian folks in my building won't take them if offered so spares can't be shared.I've already got people lined up for my tomatoes - slicers especially.

So I'll learn and watch the growing art whether is heavy, sturdy, thick-stemmed fruit bearers or in delicate rows of super-nutritious greens. And I'll take pictures. And I'll show them to you.