It's been raining so it's important to harvest greens before the slugs have their way with them.  Tonight I made fresh salsa using cilantro, parsley, and green onions from the garden, and tapatias using lettuce from the garden and tomatoes from the bump window, and salmon from the Kenai River that we dipnetted on Friday. 

The Stupice tomatoes are great for tacos and salsa, but the Sungold are too good to eat any way but one by one. They are so sweet and tangy!

I had more fish carcasses to bury, and some old freezer-burned fish roe from a friend.  I dug between the rows of greens and "planted" them with fish parts.  It looks like I weeded there, a great illusion.  In past years when I've done this, the greens get noticeably darker and more robust on that fish fertilizer! 

Posted by gail_heineman at 7:25 PM YDT

Updated: Tuesday, 24 July 2007 7:33 PM YDT

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Last fall a friend gave me a Pink Radiance peony.i?? I planted it in the sunniest bed in my garden.i?? Today I picked the first bloom, a lovely double pink with just enough fragrance to entice me to bury my nose in it.i?? This is the first peony to bloom in my garden since I moved here in 1982.i?? I planted some others elsewhere but peonies require full sun, I've learned.i??

I grew Shungiku for the first time this year, an edible chrysanthemum.i?? Unfortunately it tastes too strong for me.i?? Although the daylight is slowly receding, the days are still warm and growth of many plants can be mind-boggling.i?? Those Shungiku in partial sun are four inches tall.i?? Those in a sunny spot are three feet tall, shading my tomatoes, and just starting to form flower heads.i?? I cut the tallest to fill in my peony bouquet.i?? I won't likely grow Shungiku again.

We're enjoying chard and kale, cooked with garlic and tomato sauce as a side dish.i?? I chopped some kale into spaghetti sauce and baked an eggplant casserole - yum!i?? The cilantro is doing well, and added flavor the potato salad I made with my friend Cindy's Matanuska Valley potatoes (last year's potatoes still good).

Posted by gail_heineman at 9:44 AM YDT

Updated: Tuesday, 24 July 2007 7:24 PM YDT

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I buried the salmon carcasses from Sunday's fishing in my raised beds, where some of the plants were not thriving.  If they're not happy by now they won't produce this summer.  Goodbye arugula, Caserta squash, and strawberry spinach.  I transplanted some overcrowded kale and chard into the cleared soil atop the fish.

My spinach bolted so I harvested it all.  When the days turned shorted, there it went.  Bolting is a problem with greens here, and is why we're so limited on varieties that produce well.   

Last night we had our first Chard meal.  It was mostly Lucullus with some Rhubarb chard.   The Lucullus grows the fastest of all the varieties I've tried, but it's also the mildest, almost too mild for cooking.  I'll have to try it raw next time.  The chard is definitely light limited, because this first harvest is from my sunniest bed.  

Posted by gail_heineman at 11:57 AM YDT

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Yesterday the holes in some of the chard leaves were unmistakable.  I'd been in denial, but I peered closely at the leaves of a struggling zuchinni plant.  Slugs!  Tiny slugs, the size of long-grain rice, but lots and lots of slimy grey slugs!  Aaagh!  I poured Sluggo pellets around the raised bed, and tore off the infested leaf and threw it near the sluggo.

Today it's raining.  Please, Sluggo (non-toxic biodegradable slug bait), do your work.  I will not go out and pick up slugs and kill them.  

I've used Sluggo in years past.  In my experience it slows them way down but doesn't stop them.  Only picking up all of them stops them, and that's not going to happen here.

Posted by gail_heineman at 11:02 AM YDT

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Today I made fish stock from the heads and backbones of the red salmon we dipnetted from the Kasilof River yesterday.  I buried the bones in the rows of seeds that didn't germinate in my garden very well:  some cilantro and thyme.  Other cilantro did ok.  Some of my seeds are probably too old and I should throw them away.

So now I have some room to transplant the greens that germinated very well and are too crowded.  I'll wait a couple of days for the soil mounded over the bones to sink down a bit before I do the transplanting.

Over the years I've buried many a salmon carcass in this garden.  I sometimes stick my finger on a pointy vertebra bone that hasn't decomposed yet. 

Posted by gail_heineman at 10:36 PM YDT

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