Not news to anyone but me, but a couple of my strawberries are
starting to blush meaning those juicy delights will be breakfast in
about a week. But speaking of strawberries …
Carolyn Goodwin of SoundFood.org
wrote this week about a project by Bainbridge Island’s
Voyager Montesori Elementary School to help save the Marshall
strawberry, which once grew in abundance on the island. Last fall,
Tristan Baurick
wrote about an additional effort by the Bainbridge
Historical society to tell people about the fruit’s history and
sale of plants to raise funds for the organization.
Food Events
• Bremerton Urban Garden Society hosts its Edible
Garden Tour on Saturday.
• Museum of History and Industry
(MOHAI) hosts its second annual End of Prohibition
Celebration from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday, June 3. The
celebration includes a wine tasting. Tickets are $45. Or you can
put that $45 toward 20 bottles of Two-Buck Chuck and make your own
celebration.
I have officially joined the home gardening/community garden
craze. I am apparently one of 75 million this year, according to
garden columnist Ann
Lovejoy.
This weekend was all about the outdoors, notably, getting my
vegetable and herb garden set. As I explore cooking good food, the
more I crave fresh herbs and produce.
In addition to
joining a CSA this year, I took to filling beds and pots
with a variety of fruit, herbs and veggies.
This isn’t the first time I’ve plopped some vegetables into the
dirt. A few years back, I had a bed full of mass twisting tomato
vines that killed everything else in their paths that produced
masses of basketball-sized tomatoes. Seriously, basketball. OK,
like kiddie basketball. It was a year of plenty of rain and the
poor things never did ripen, despite my attempt to hang them in the
house after nearly half of them exploded.
Thai Basil
I also have rosemary, thyme and a few other edibles scattered
around the flower garden.
This year, we built a raised bed to help drainage, and we
dragged out all the pots that had been stacking up in the shed. I
got all my starts in this weekend, even though the work was nearly
undone by one 40-pound mutt (named Suki) who apparently thought
digging out holes in the bed and scattering the pots all over the
patio was world-class fun. If she wasn’t so darn cute, I might
offer her up here. So, we salvaged what we could and surrounded the
place with kennel wire. We’ll see today if the garden holds.
Sequoia Strawberry
I still haven’t gone all the way, tearing out a majority of my
yard for food, like
some Kitsap gardeners. But it’s a start. So far I’ve got
two varieties of heirloom tomatoes, thai basil, sweet basil,
oregano, greens, strawberries (LOTS of strawberries), sweet peas,
an artichoke, some asparagus, garlic, and some white radishes with
purple centers. It’s pretty ambitious, but if only half survive,
I’ll be happy.
Have any of you started a new food garden or joined together
with others in a community garden? Share what you’re growing and
how it’s going in the comments.
