Strawberries

The strawberries are starting to ripen. I picked this group this morning. Everyday brings more sweetness to them. I've yet to taste from today's harvest but I'll eat them even if they are a little tart. It is the first fruit from the garden.

Lovely Chard

Various chards I harvested and washed. The ones with the wide stems and pink streaks are likely a cross between some red chard and some Glatter Silber chard. Chard will cross readily with other chard. I generally cut the thick stems out and cook them separately from the leaves. They can be blanched in water with a little lemon added, and served on their own. Sometimes I chop and sauté them with onions to add to soups. The leaves are delicious steamed or sautéed with a little garlic and olive oil, or with a little bacon, wine vinegar and red pepper flakes. Chard is very versatile and its mild flavor makes it very pleasant to eat frequently. It is also extremely easy to grow, and if let to go to seed (in its second year, it being a biennial) many delightful variations can occur. When it starts to send up a flower stalk, it can be cut and used as mulch too, which is handy when transplanting seedlings that might like a little mulch.

Spring Rain

Rainy day today. We had a good downpour for a while. Rain delays turning on the irrigation. I wish I had installed my rainwater tanks last fall. Big projects take time and money though, so I'll get to the tanks when I can. I've calculated the amount of water I can harvest off my roof by using Brad Lancaster's books Rainwater Harvesting vols. 1 & 2.

They are both filled with excellent ideas for using water more efficiently and valuable information on how to harvest water. I checked the average annual rainfall in this area (26 inches or 2.16 ft) and measured my roof area. I'd be harvesting water from less than half the roof surface, since I'd put larger tanks in the back of the house and probably no tanks in the front of the house. The formula is catchment area (sq ft) x rainfall (ft) x 7.48 gall/ft x coefficient (80%). Two downspouts in the back of the house would put out approximately 16,500 gallons per year, much more than I could reasonably be expected to store in tanks. That's why Brad Lancaster says "the cheapest place to store water is in the soil," and he advocates the generous use of mulch, and turning one's garden soil into a sponge of organic material - roots, organic matter, organism, and more.

I'm looking at getting two 1550 gallon storage tanks, which would make a tiny dent in my watering needs during the summer, but those drops add up. One of the main issues in this climate is we get our rain over half the year and then no rain during the hot half of the year. Until I get those tanks, I'll be working on building the sponginess of my soil.

Most of the water in the front of the house goes into the soil. The driveway and sidewalks drain into garden beds or to the ever-shrinking lawn. Some water from the road runs into the berm & basin I put next to the pavement, watering the plants in that garden system.