In My San Diego Garden and Kitchen

May 20

May 20 In My San Diego Garden and Kitchen

My husband holds a huge head of lettuce harvested from the garden last week. Lettuce weather continues for us in San Diego. It’s been a cool May with intermittent light showers. No hot days that hasten bolting. ‘Jericho’ lettuce, a warm weather romaine selection from Israel has performed perfectly in the late spring garden. I will try to do successive plantings from seed transplanted to the garden for summer salads.

This is the first spring that I have successfully grown radicchio. Most years the weather warms and the plants don’t form heads, they shrivel or other crops encroach. This year, with a cool spring six plants did very nicely, though requiring more water than any of the other crops. Then I went to China for fourteen days. Opossums repeatedly tore up the bed with the radicchio, the lettuce bed and the newly sprouted corn. My garden tender friend did her best to cover the beds, tuck corn plants back in the ground and salvage the radicchio and lettuce. Only two radicchio survived the pillaging.

I had a few leaves in a salad and then gave the two heads to friends who especially like radicchio. Before leaving again on a trip last Wednesday to see my three month old grandson in Seattle, I fortified the garden. It isn’t pretty—rather looks like a war zone.

I returned home today and the fortifications held. I’ve gardened in this location for 27 years and never been bothered by opossums in the backyard until this spring. This is not how I want to grow vegetables.

Along with lettuce and spring onions, my suitcase to Seattle included pint jars of calendula flowers and rose petals. TSA decided these were not a threat this time. No little notes of inspection in my suitcase. We made calendula- and rose-infused essential oils using a mix of almond and avocado oils. Instructions in Harvest: Unexpected Projects Using 47 Extraordinary Garden Plants .

Here are two of my favorite perennials from days of gardening in Massachusetts. The Seattle street side gardens in the Ballard neighborhood overflow with spring goodness. What a joy to walk my son’s dog several times a day.

See what other garden bloggers harvested last week in their gardens at Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.