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.