Lentil growing at home

There is a Big Experiment going on here. Growing Lentils!
Over the past couple years I've been curious about growing lentils. In Eastern Washington there is a big commercial lentil growing area. But I have been unable to find ANY information about growing lentils on a small scale. I realize its likely way too late to get any mature lentils, but there was this bare spot of garden, and this jar of lentils, and......... you get the idea.

A week ago I planted these, that was July 10. With lots of hot weather and a couple thundershowers, they popped right out of the ground. being legumes, I thought they would have more of a pea leaf, but we'll see. I've been told that lentils don't like "wet feet" such as our high ground water, so it will be interesting to see how they do.

Mizuna in Early Spring

Here's the little Mizuna plant that sprouted. You can just see where the center is really growing up, that's where the flower bud popped up.

Ruminations on Overwintering

Today is a damp, drippy day. After feeding the sheep and pigs this morning I needed to water the greenhouse. Its days like this it would be nice to have a retractable roof !! Timmy got busy wapping ice and the remaining snow drifts so I began pulling up the Calendula plants from last year. Maybe there will be less than 50,000 volunteers if I can get some of that old seed out of the garden. Won't I be thrilled with only 25,000 volunteer Calendulas : )

While I pulled plants and scooped up seed on my hands and knees, I couldn't help but notice a little bit of green here and there. Was that one of last years' Chard plants ? Do I see a Celery leaf ? Wow, the Red Orach is already sprouting. Now I wonder about last years' Kale, could it have overwintered ? In the greenhouse, one Mizuna plant popped up when I started watering in early March. Today I saw a flower head on it starting to sprout, so I popped it off and ate it - wow and amazing - that was a great taste of things to come !!

How much do I miss from tilling things up in the Fall ? How much can I learn about early season crops from just letting Winter do its snowy job and cover things to see what comes up. Granted, many of these things will be ready to go to seed if indeed they did make it over the Winter. But that could be a good thing as well. I wonder if any lettuce could overwinter ??????

Yipes, I better get this years' garden planned out before I start imagining next Spring, eh ?

Garlic Scapes and etc

Today I picked the heads of the seed shoots from the garlic. That means it should be ready to harvest in 2 - 3 weeks, if the weather stays warm. I've seen these Garlic Scapes mentioned as being eatable, so I asked my friend who gave me the garlic last year. Tonight we ended up making pesto with them; 3 Garlic scapes, small handful of basil, 1/4 cup fresh parmesan, some pine nuts and about 1/4 cup olive oil. It was a lovely green color, and quite flavory, spicy, we didn't need much on our spaghettit to make it yummy !!

Alos harvesting from the garden this week are; broccoli, 4 kinds of lettuce, cauliflower, bok choy which is mostly going to seed, Mizuna, kohlrabi and green beans from the greenhouse.

wire wicket row cover

I've always wanted to make some wire wickets to support rowcovers, like is shown in various garden catalogs. Since this is the year for row covers, it was time. At the farm supply I got a roll (maybe 200') of # 8 or 9 wire, then I fashioned it into wickets. First I figured that I needed a 4" piece of wire, at 18" from each end I twisted a loop about 1" by using the wire clippers. My rowcover material is 7' wide and I wanted to double the thickness. After putting the wickets in about every 4', hay string is strung down either length, the string is hooked into the loops. There is no need to tie or thread the string in, it should just slide into the loop. Then the two ends of the string are tied together about 12" from the last wicket and staked down at the end like a tent is. Do that at both ends of the row.

The row cover is laid along the wickets and draped down the sides. Then at either end of the row, gather the end of the row cover together, tie it and tie it to the stake that is holding the strings. Pull it quite snug and it will hold the rowcover in pretty good order. You can see I laid a fence rail alongside because we have some wind here. Plus my row is about 24' long.

This worked really well until our young cats came out of hibernation and began terrorizing. They mashed the wickets in just a few days. Thankfully we had some small rebar hoops which I replaced the wickets with. Wire wickets are cheap and pretty easy to set up, if you don't have young cats around !!!

Note on cats. Cats like ours, think row covers are race ways. It's a daily process to re set the hoops and adjust the row cover. The cats can "play" enough in the row cover to expose plants to the elements, so the covers need to be constantly checked. Finally I realized that the nifty little wire wickets weren't going to be enough support, the cats just flattened a few of them. So I put in rebar hoops and put 4" rails on the edges of the row cover. That kept it firm enough and kind of took the fun out of it for the critters.

yield from rowcover plot

Here is the June 8 yield from the rowcover plot that was planted May 2. Over 8 lbs or greens; Pac Choi, Kale, Napa Cabbage, Tokyo Mizuna. I planted out transplants of all these. The greens were interplanted around Broccoli, Cauliflower and Cabbage so they are still out. And probably appreciating the extra space now !!

Wow, this Spring I planted a few broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage transplants. It was mid-March. Now in mid-June the Broccoli are over 2' tall. One is forming a head, it will be fun to see how big the head gets.