a week away..

bad timing i know... i don't have much of a choice though. i have been chosen as the delegate for my district to represent at an international shareholders conference, and it just happened to be the first week of June. worst week to step away from the garden.. i'm nervous for the most recent planted beds as it has been very hot this past week. the first couple patches planted are already well enough established that they no longer droop in the heat. it's supposed to cool down this week, here's hoping..

we created this series of beds [which is truly one connected bed] one section at a time, so we have had the benefit of a couple weeks to observe how the first sections took before planting more. we used a sort of 'lasagna' style of building beds, we turned, mulched with cardboard, composted mulch, topsoil and composted sheep manure. there has yet to be a weed.

tada! well, this is the garden so far.. i had to halt production to reserve funds [and time] for this trip that starts tomorrow. what we have in the buckets is orange mint and peppermint, a fig tree, in the back bed lettuce [mesclun mix], carrots, radish, tomato, and rhubarb. in the main beds we have purple kale, regular and oriental eggplants, bok choy, rainbow swiss chard, and more radish. for peppers there's hot hungarian, long red italian, hot cherry, cayenne, bell pepper, and possibly a couple other i can't remember. there's a variety of tomatoes too.. cherry, black cherry, burgundy stripe heirloom, early girl, and i think there was a yellow one as well. oh, and blackberries and red onions!

the corner closest to the door houses most of the herbs, things we will want ready access to when cooking. the variety so far includes rosemary, french tarragon, regular and hot oregano, basil, sage, lavender, flat and ruffled parsley, dill, thyme and lemon thyme, chives and a little curry. i also finally found some chamomile seeds! i was excited to find any at all.

we wanted to plant a fruit tree of some sort, but we aren't sure if we can put a tree on this property.. so we decided to start with a tree we can keep in a pot; a fig tree. a woman at the farmer's market had held onto it for me, i fell in love with the idea of fresh figs. i covered the top with rocks after mulching with composted manure to keep the moisture in.

this will be the last entry until i return next weekend, when i will evaluate how the plot survives my absence in such a sensitive time. hopefully the housemates will remember to water [and love it!].