May Day! May Day! Pleasant weather up ahead! Abort Operation:Hibernate! Dig out the sundresses, wipe clean the sunglasses, and find that long-lost tube of sunscreen. It's gonna be a peach of a Sunday! Get thee to Winona Farms and purchase some fine pepper and tomato plants (and/or herbs, onions, lettuce, etc.) Sale begins at 11am and will go until 2pm on Sunday May 1st. Location is 5900 block of SW Taylors Ferry. Please email me for specific address - winonafarms@gmail.com. Feel free to peruse the craigslist ad for an extended list of plants, or simply click the 'Plants For Sale' button right above this post.
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Miss pdxlisa at Backyard Farm was kind enough to invite me to their plant exchange last weekend (also known as the 70 degree day that spring quickly came and just as quickly left on) and I got to meet some new people and see some new gardening ideas. I'm always impressed with people and their creativity to do the most with minimum space. I've got a 1/2 acre to play with, so space isn't an issue (the large trees are another story.) Things like devising the front yard into an edible landscape are concepts I've heard of and even thought about, but haven't spent much time actually seeing it applied. It can be such a liberating experience when you see new possibilities in places where it seemed composed and stagnant. I'm not about to do a whole yard make-over, but a 4'x4' bed this summer seems doable. It doesn't have to be all roses... Now, if I could just carve out some more time in the day. About 24 hours should suffice.
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Had my first big sale this week. Earlier in the winter, a friend of mine got to talking about gardens and specifically peppers. He was fed up with the past couple years, as the weather and deer had really eaten is green thumb down to a nub. His demeanor was most certainly apathetic and was leaning against starting a garden this year.
However, a funny thing happened to him. He got infected by a familiar bug. Optimism. Hope. That boundless energy that anything is possible. I like to think I played a small part in it, as I had been planning 2011 as soon as the rains came pouring down in September of 2010. My enthusiasm was non-stop and the more we talked, the more my friend got excited about the spring. Up until this year, he left the varieties of peppers he planted to whatever the garden store had ordered from the nursery. This year was going to be different. We began pouring over catalogs and pepper varieties he wanted to try. Instead of being left to the standard varieties that are at every nursery, he would choose exactly what he wanted to grow.
We made a deal - any seeds he bought, I would grow them and he would get as many plants as he wanted from the packet. He was a driver in the increase in pepper varieties for me this year. Specifically, the anchos, Valencia, Chichen Itza, Inferno Hybrid, Hungarian Hot Wax, Hot Banana, and Caloro varieties would not have been grown if not for his insistence. Given that I'm a serial seed buyer, I wholly endorsed this because it meant I was getting free seeds and more fun stuff to grow!
Wednesday, I delivered the order to him. All told, it was 63 plants, which is my biggest order to date. It was a very happy day for both of us. In addition, it freed up some space in my poly tunnel for the last wave of tomatoes I've got coming out of the seed room. Perfect timing.
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I had hoped to be updating this blog a bit more frequently. Unfortunately, I've been busy potting up plants and rearranging flats and building new greenhouses and poly tunnels to house them all. I thought that I would sell a few more plants by now, but the weather being what it was, no one was interested in doing anything in the garden, cool or warm season planting. As such, it's been an ongoing struggle to keep a bunch of plates spinning with more being added each week. I've had some failures, but so far, I've done pretty well. I'm always learning and always taking notes on what I'll try differently next year. All in all, it's been a pretty enjoyable experience. Not even 5" of April rain can dampen that.
Enjoy the sun people of Portlandia - it is well deserved after enduring such a wet month. Please drop by on Sunday, even if it's to say hello.
Cheers,
Zach
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