With the recent combo of heat and rain, you can almost sit and watch the garden grow right now.

We know what you're thinking - and don't act like you've got more important places to be right now than sitting and watching the garden grow. Everything is cancelled and it beats what's on TV. Besides, if you watch your garden closely enough there are things you can learn.

One of the things Ben has learned is the importance of airflow. With the recent growth spurt, too-close tomatoes are starting to crowd into one another, rotting out the budding fruits.

If you're into live-action gardening, one particularly fast-growing crop to try is callaloo. Ideally it would be planted by now, but if you can get your hands on some of the tiny seed, there is still time as it only takes 30 days to maturity. As a relative of amaranth, it is a "C4" crop which means it synthesizes sugars with bonds of four carbon rather than three, so it can produce its building blocks quicker and blast towards the sky. 

Corn and sugar cane are two other C4 crops, as is the Paulownia tree which is native to China and said by some to be the world's fastest growing tree. There is talk of harnessing these fast-growing trees to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, but there is a lot of potential for them to become invasive species that could wipe out ecosystems. We'll stick to the abundant crop of callaloo, the popular Caribbean green that will die back in the fall before it can become a problem. 

 

Ben's callaloo seeds after only one week.