Last Call for So Co Summer Veggie Gardens
Wow, Mid-May already. How on earth did that happen? The kids will be out of school in less than a month and that will require a fortitude of steadily flowing tasty meals at the kitchen table: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Not to mention the snacks. And the friends. And their astonishing capacity to be duly fed and watered whatever time of day or night!
One way to survive the onslaught of ravenous offspring seemingly round the clock is to put a little time into planting that summer veggie patch. And to benefit from an abundance of backyard bounty through July, August and September, this season's window of growing time is getting smaller by the minute.
According to the North Cal ag experts at UC Davis and the Sonoma County Master Gardener's Guild, summer vegetable gardens in these parts should be well under way by the end of May. There's an art to the ultimate veggie patch, as I learned from our great friends, Lori and Michael, this past weekend. For over the border into Marin, Michael must have rototilled his dear Dad Bill's classic octogenarian's ranch-style backyard into one massive vegetable patch this Spring.
Having put in every tomato under the sun, several rows of swiss chard, radishes, peppers, squash, herbs, corn, you name it, much of Bill's bounty is already producing by the bushel-load. It has proved a perfect multi-generational project for Michael and his Dad, with new-farmer Bill's grandkids pitching in for regular nightly visits to weed and water.
Bill is a story teller and he's been busy weaving his true tales of intrigue from World War II and beyond, as Michael and assorted offspring potter around the veggie patch as contented captive audience. The whole extended family will benefit from the sheer volume and quality of this semi-private organic garden and I'm hoping that with good weather and Lori and Michael's famous hospitality, there will be plenty left over for friends!
In the meantime, Mother's Day past in a bit of a blur for me. Down with a bug, I'd ditched any idea of trawling around the Bay Area on some random Mother's Day cultural pursuit. With inspiration from Lori and Michael's incredible, organic dinner prepared largely with produce from Grandpa Bill's Garden, I took myself a matronly pew under a convenient sun umbrella and orchestrated the prepping of abandoned veggie beds in my own backyard.
The men in my life (of which there are a few - and yes, they do all know one another) rallied to the cause and couldn't have given me a finer Mother's Day gift if they'd tried (well, maybe an I Phone would have come close, but I do hear that there is finally going to be a new and improved version this summer)!
In addition to the conveniently located lower herb and tomato garden on the kitchen patio, I'm looking forward to a summer set of raised veggie beds on the hillside. We're planting corn, pumpkins, arugula, broccoli raab and squash. Now all I need to do is water, wait, water and work out how to sneakily integrate all of this tasty backyard produce into the summer vacation daily diet a pack of hungry teenage boys.
