This year my raised bed garden is in shambles. I was so excited at the start of the growing season, making little plans for my beautiful garden-to-be. But since then it's been a sandbox for a 3 year old, a place for the dog to bury bones, a buffet for slugs, and a cache for all of the early summer's rain. Swiss chard went down weeping and looking more like swiss cheese, kale and spinach never came up, and even marigolds have been battered. But through it all, despite storm and attack, the mighty onions carry on! Walking onions from Perfectly Perennials in Pouch Cove are still doing well, but even more so the chives are living life large. A small patch of chives that overwintered on my front porch in a milk crate was transplanted into the bed this Spring. Within days it was growing larger and greener. It's had lots of lovely purple blossoms and it's still getting new shoots all the time. No matter how much I trim it to sprinkle on baked potatoes, it keeps on going.
For one last hurrah I've tried broadcasting salad greens seeds across the raised bed and surrounded the bed with a little plastic mesh fence. I've also planted some other vegetables in containers and put them high up on the picnic table. The fence has kept out the dog but I still keep finding mysterious shovels and buckets in the raised bed. I've got some organic slug bait to try which is both dog and child friendly, but will hopefully deter the armies of gastropods that camp in my yard.
Through all this I've been hopeful and then crushed each time I plant something new and then find it destroyed. Instead of carrying on with that roller coaster, I've decided to celebrate what I've got instead. So I now proudly stand as a chive-grower and chive enthusiast! I can't use them all up on baked potatoes alone, so I've started searching out new ways to use the mighty and resilient chive and here are some of the links I've come across. Click on the images below to check out the recipes.
