Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Garden Update: Plants bolting like greased lightning!

I didn't think the weather had gotten that nice, especially when I went away for a last minute trip for about a week, but over that time my tatsoi mustard decided to bolt when I wasn't looking:



It looked delicious, beautiful and rosette leafy when I left it, I made a salad from quite a few full heads before transplanting these guys before I left (to bolt, honestly) for eventual seed saving.  I still didn't expect the dramatic metamorphosis in the week I was gone.

They look great, and if they're like other mustards, will probably give me a plethora of seeds (ha, anyone seen the Three Amigos?) 

I wonder if my moving them might have stimulated bolting, or if one near 70 degree F day when I full-on gardened prior to my departure kicked them into bolting gear? Probably that one day, I don't think I've ever heard of transplanting to cause bolting.

In anticipation of the tatsoi mustards going to bolt, I planted kohlrabi seeds right next to the mustard base so that I'll have something to make up for mustard once it seeds and I have to cut it down.  Not sure if this will work well, but I figured I might as well give it a try.

Another plant that's bolted (and has been in that state for quite a while now) is the baby bok choi).  It's nice to see some flowers in this weather, and their spoonlike cupped leaves beneath the flowers are pretty dandy too.  They've been in flower for good time... I wonder when they'll seed.  I realized that I didn't eat the bok choy as often as I should have, but I think I hadn't prepared/research enough recipes.  Ah well, seeds for me.


My gargantuan garden to do list is 3/4 done (except I always keep thinking of things to add to it...) The biggest change was some of the planned garden layout.  This change is due greatly in part to my rampant strawberries.  The daughter plants/offshoots have been wild and I have not had time to move them/thin them properly, so either I should allow the beds to be primarily strawberries, thin the strawberries to plant seeds in the bed with them,  or I need to seed start and plant large enough seedlings in with the bed to be able to compete (terrible I know) with the strawberry plants.  I'm going with the latter and will just start some seeds on a nice sunny day outside and then plant them in the bed.  There would be no way a seed could find some sun and air in that mess.

Here is the new garden setup (click pic to see all the detail):