Baby Kale

This is an excerpt from the weekly News-Loveletter. If you would like it sent to your inbox directly (with all the other juicy bits, including a mini joy practice), you can add yourself to my mailing list here.

At the end of July, who is thinking of winter? The baby kale. It’s not easy to take root in the heat of summer. All respect to these youngsters.

When spring’s lettuce bolted, Seda and I loaded the van with compost-filled totes to help awaken the now-vacant beds into a new season. Clover that lined our path now mulches for a boost of nitrogen. We tucked the baby kales, chard, and lettuces into our no-dig winter garden with plenty of koosh for their first hot weeks.

And water! A couple plants were dug up last night by errant raccoons, a dog, or a cat—nobody’s fessing up. We water by hand rather than by drip line, so we caught the displacement and tucked the babies back in tight.

When have you begun something at what looked like the “wrong” time, only to have it meet needs for all?