It is quite amazing that despite a devastating flood, the Mission gardens continued to grow. This is what a garden looks like when you haven’t tended to it for two months. Piled high with silt left by the flood, magically the lettuce, sweet peas, sunflowers and zucchinis continued to grow. We spent a whole afternoon digging away at the silt trying to reach real soil again – it was backbreaking work – that silt is like concrete when it is dry. I am amazed anything survived at all. We managed to harvest some cherry tomatoes, a yellow zucchini, a couple small carrots and a bunch of sweat pea blooms.
It was really disappointing however to see how much didn’t grow especially after we had spent so much time carefully planting each row and tending to it every couple of nights. That was before the flood though and you just can’t fight nature. We’ve got to go back this weekend and clean it up before the snow comes. Those sunflowers will be the most work – we need to chop them down into little bits so that they compost easily. They are practically trees. Turns out they can grow in just about any kind of condition. I’m impressed.
I hope that next summer we can count on a full harvest without any floods but of course, we can’t predict anything at all. Though I am pretty sure there will always be an abundance of rhubarb in the garden no matter what happens. I love the snapshot below of the head gardener Georgina holding the biggest rhubarb leaf I have ever seen in my life. I guess all of the “nutrients” (ie. waste) in the silt really helped it reach gigantic proportions. Rhubarb pie for days, folks…
