Budding Gourmand: number 1

Budding gourmand.

Because I like to seed, plant and grow. Because I love gastronomy. Because I'm growing my own food for the first time and want, need, a place to document it.

In the ground so far: at least ten heirloom & paste tomato plants, basil, chives, sage, oregano, thyme & winter savoury, and strawberry plant (read about my friend below).

Still to plant: cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, habanero peppers, cucumber, carrots, peas & beans, salad greens. Hopefully enough food to feed Roland and me (and our friends and neighbours) for the summer.

At the market today: the first of the summer strawberries, fresh picked (Mclean's Berry Farm tells me they have never picked strawberries on June 2nd before - a blessing of the hot spring we are having), spinach, mixed greens and tamworth pork. Cannot wait for a succulent, pastured raised pork chop, grilled with a honey mustard glaze and served on lightly dressed greens... already dreaming about tomorrow night's supper.


Strawberry plant

One glowing strawberry plant, round green leaves open to the sun, sweet tiny four-petal white flowers, and, fingers crossed, juicy fruit the squirrels never get to taste.

Strawberry plant lives in a strawberry plant prison. A chicken wire and 2X4 frame my fella, Roland, built to protect her from the mean world (read: squirrels). When we brought our tender plant home I happily planted her in a sunny spot, with room to grow and stretch. Ideally her vines will crawl along the soil, before setting up to root a secondary plant - more round green leaves, more sweet flowers, and more juicy fruit. The morning after she was set into my garden, I found those sweet flowers ripped from the stem, shred to the ground; one barely ripe fruit torn from the vine. A squirrel.

Squirrels and I are not strangers. They prevented me from tasting most of my very first crop of tomatoes last summer. They are horrible, wasteful little creatures. They will take a singular bite out of any ripe fruit they can reach and leave you the bloody evidence. They are my greatest enemy during growing season.

In my brief experience the only defence against a menace like a squirrel is to jail your plants in chicken wire and 2X4. I thought about catching one and stringing it up as a notice to all other neighborhood squirrels, but this seems too cruel, even for them. We have a cat, Ruby, who doesn't deter them at all, and doucing plants in cayenne pepper proved a failure (while in thought an excellent suggestion - they get the pepper on their grubby paws and rub it into their eyes which makes them never want to come back and in the worst case scratch their eyes out).

One plant prison in place, only about five more to build.