My beginning garden 2014

Cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, lavender

I think I have gotten almost everything into my garden that's going in. Here you see, arranged prettily (I really don't especially like regimented rows) some Bibb lettuce in the middle, with broccoli on the right and red cabbage on the left. I hope I left enough room between each one, as I remember last year's cabbage grew to massive proportions.

Looking to the north at my 7' x 23' plot

Here's another shot of my plot, with strawberries on the right near the fence, and some sugar snap peas hopefully willing to climb up those little sticks until they get to the fence itself. You can see the plot to my left has not yet begun to be cleared for planting. I'm so glad I didn't wait until MY plot was that overgrown before getting started.

Looking south at the other end of my plot

See all that greenery in the middle? Well, that's borage that has replanted itself from the flowers. I've learned that at this stage, borage leaves are tasty and nutritious. Want to see what the borage flower looks like? Take a look at this post from last June. One of the best parts about a blog is the ability to go back a year, two years, and look at the progress I've made in the garden, and have the ability to compare my activities as well. Past the borage you can see my little beet starts coming up, and some more salad greens. Here's a closeup.

Beets in the middle, salad greens on the left, and flowers

I also put in some sweet pea flowers and one double hollyhock, which you can see on either side of the veggies. I'm not sure why I did that, but I suspect they will look good in a month or two. I just wanted some pretty flowers, although in the middle of that borage (and here in front of the hollyhock), I have some volunteer nasturtiums that will add color as well.

The community garden, looking east to west

We have ten separate plots and a community garden in the middle between them, five on a side. We've got onions, sage, mint, currants and strawberries that came back from last year, but it's been a struggle to get the rest cleared out. At the back of this plot we found some poison hemlock that was coming up and had to be removed. I just put a yellow and a green zucchini squash plant in the middle of this area, which will probably take up the rest of the room we have in there. Those two plants will feed all of us, I suspect, this summer.

It's a lot of work to garden, but it's also very satisfying to get my hands down in the dirt and to rip out those pesky buttercups. All the plots are in use except for one, which I think we will clear out and maybe plant some pumpkins or whatnot. For now, we've got a good start on the season!
:-)

Poison hemlock

This morning there was an interesting article in the Bellingham Herald about poison hemlock. It seems this guy, David Westerlund, went out to his garden and picked what he thought was a carrot. He put it all together with some "cabbage, garlic, ginger, onions, sea salt and whey" to ferment and left it for six days. Then he had it for lunch.

Two hours after he ate it he was in the emergency room, because what he ate was poison hemlock, also known conium maculatum. If you go to Wikipedia (which you know I did), it redirects "poison hemlock" to the page about conium, which is the same hemlock that Socrates was given to kill him. From this Wikipedia link:

Coniine is a neurotoxin, which disrupts the workings of the central nervous system and is toxic to humans and all classes of livestock. Ingestion in any quantity can result in respiratory collapse and death.

Apparently Westerlund felt weird and his eyes stopped tracking properly, he got all shaky and went to the hospital. He will apparently recover with no ill effects. (I suspect he got a thorough stomach pumping.) And another woman in Washington state ate some in a salad and died. Since it grows in the springtime and can travel from nearby places by the seed blowing in the wind, it can show up in gardens.

But you can tell it apart from things that are edible by one very important sign: the stem has purple streaks or splotches on it. From the Herald:

Looking back, Westerlund said he should have realized it wasn't a carrot, even if he didn't know about poison hemlock. A carrot's stem is hairy, but the stem on the plant he pulled up was smooth and had purple splotches. The plant's taproot was white, like a parsnip, Westerlund said. The taproot on a carrot is orange.

Yes, he was very lucky. I thought it might help some others who might see a "volunteer" plant in your garden from making the same mistake. I used to see it growing near creeks in Boulder, and we wouldn't even touch it for fear of getting some of the bad juju on us. Apparently every part of the plant is poisonous. You are supposed to wear gloves when you pull it out, too, just in case. Anybody else ever seen it in the wild?
:-]