Roxie and the radishes

Two quick things:

First, Foxy Roxie has finally finished molting and growing back her feathers.  We are happy to report that she is just as fantastic as ever--and has started laying eggs once again.  Just like her earlier attempts, once she gets started she really goes; we are at three eggs in three days, and all of them her signature shade of greenish-blue.

Now if Fern would just get done with this molting business, we'd be at full laying capacity here.  It will be fun to be back where I have more eggs than I know what to do with....

And, then secondly, I have my first harvest from my experimental polyculture bed.  Radishes--the first time, actually, that I've really had success with them.  Interesting, considering that I haven't touched the bed since I planted it.  These are an heirloom called French Breakfast.

I've never really liked radishes, if you must know.  So, I thought I would pick these young and give them their best possible opportunity to charm me.  Lo and behold, they weren't awful--light and crunchy in fact.  Curiously radish-flavored without that being the bad, sharp thing I am accustomed to--does that make sense?  Anyway, there is nothing quite like these taste-tests, so soon after picking, which is, itself, an adventure as you push aside the leaves in search of the candy-red radish tops popping out of the ground.

I can't remember if I've really talked about the polyculture bed that I planted several weeks ago with my little friends Teagan and Greyson--it is my experiment into the realm of permaculture, an attempt to garden a little more like nature and less like control-freak humans.  The goal here is to allow the plants to flourish in their own communities and therefore require less work from the gardener and fewer amendments and resources.  Based on ideas from Gaia's Garden, I chose a variety of early spring plants of varying families and with differing resource requirements to plant all together in a bed.  For my plot, which is around 2' x 4', I used:

Nantes carrot
Chinese cabbage (can't remember the exact variety, sorry--maybe tat soi?)
Rainbow chard
French Breakfast radish
Bloomsdale spinach
Bunching onions
Merlot lettuce
Mesclun mix
Chioggia beets

Some of these are deep rooted, like the carrots, others are shallow rooted or require some shade in hot weather, like the lettuce, and still others, like the onions, are slim and tall and slip in anywhere.  The plants will sort out what works and what doesn't, and harvesting should be used as a tool for thinning out the planting--in other words, pull the whole plant so that something else can grow in its spot.  As warmer weather arrives, different vegetables can be planted from seed or young plants transplanted into open spaces.  The plants shade out most weeds and offer shade and support to each other, requiring little from me other than harvesting.

So far, with today's radish haul, the polyculture bed is living up to its promise of no-labor--I've done absolutely nothing to the plot other than watering once and occasionally stopping by to peer at the incredible variety of leaves pushing their way to the sunlight.  My kind of gardening :)