Miscalculations

The winter garden will soon give way to the summer crops. Time for an honest evaluation of the state of things. Watering the garden today gave me time to think about what went awry. The word miscalculations came to mind. So here are a few of my winter garden miscalculations.

My cool season garden always includes calendulas. The petals brighten my salads and bouquets cheer me in the kitchen. After I harvested the cauliflower, I moved calendula volunteers from the front yard to the vegetable garden bed next to the snow peas. Seed has been gathered, the snow pea vines removed and the calendulas are still thriving. It could be the cool spring or more likely they were planted too late and too close to the trellis. They’re covering the area where pole beans should be planted in the next few weeks. Lettuce would have been a better succession crop.

The ‘Tango’ celery forest has just passed its winter prime. The cool spring kept the stalks in peak condition and but there is some bitterness when eaten raw now. There’s nothing I’d do differently, though if the celery had ended sooner I’d be planting honeynut squash now.

Here’s another miscalculation. These ‘Classic Magic’ bachelor buttons are about three feet tall and only now are beginning to bloom. I plant flowers with vegetables to attract pollinators and for cut flower bouquets. Behind the bachelor buttons the broccoli has been removed and I have tomatoes ready to plant in this bed. I didn’t expect them to grow so tall or mature so slowly. I’ll be removing them in a few days. Seedlings planted in the front yard are a similar height but get more sun and have bloomed for several weeks.

Currently I have three small patches of arugula. I miscalculated how quickly it grows under favorable conditions. The first planting is squeezed between the sweet peas and kale, yielding only flowers now though it was perfect at the start of the season between the emerging sweet pea vines and the transplanted kale. A succession crop in another bed is my large leaf give-away arugula. I planted this small patch of arugula too soon and I’m missing the baby leaf arugula stage.

The garden is never very tidy at the intersection of the winter and summer crops. This tangle features kale holding up the billowing sweet pea vines. Sandwich in some flowering arugula and mustard flowers permitted to exist near the kale to attract hover flies which are soldiers in the pest war on aphids. This late in the season I expect aphids to overtake all the brassicas but not this year.

Views like this of the same raised bed are distant memories. Records for the fall-winter garden 2020-2021 reflect my miscalculation. No major mistakes—just lessons learned.

But here’s a pleasant miscalculation in the front yard garden. I didn’t expect the scattered seed from last year’s blue-eyed grass to take hold with such abandon in this location where light and shadow interplay. When California native plants thrive other miscalculations fade in importance.