Fava beans, giant leaves of swiss chard, and an abundance of microgreens have been the blessings of spring so far. I spent the September solstice (which is also my birthday) collecting herbs, baking, and doing all kinds of homesteading activities. This post will be a little tour of my daily garden chores during the start of spring here in South America!
The rains have yet to arrive and the days are hot and dry so, every morning I go out to the garden to water all the garden beds and turn the drip irrigation on for a while. To protect the new seedlings from the birds almost all of the garden is covered in hoops with shade cloth.
As this place has been a commercial farm in the past, I actually recycled the hoops from discarded irrigation lines and the shade cloth was jumbled up in a shed when we got here. So glad I did that - the extra shade, as well as protection from the birds, has also helped keep the young greens from going to seed too quickly.
Everyday besides watering and harvesting I also weed the garden in the morning and transplant in the evening. Fortunately all of my hard work is paying off and each day I collect salad greens for lunch, fava beans for dinner, or some type of garnish from the garden and even orange juice from our citrus trees.
A couple years ago I began growing fava beans over the winter and this is the first year we have had enough to harvest for many meals.
During the past few weeks I have collected a salad bowl's amount of fava pods, peeled them and added the beans to bone broth soup with cilantro sprinkled on top. Yum!!
Being able to go out to the garden and add something green to just about every meal is so meaningful to me as a pagan lover-of-the-land. Part of living with the seasons means enjoying the moment and the gifts of each month, but it is also requires a lot of dedication: gardener's work is never done.
To keep the abundance coming in a gardener must always be planting. I have begun transplanting tomatoes and basil for summer, as well as seeding pumpkins for late summer and fall. Exciting times await us! Happy gardening everyone <3