Beautiful Spring Harvest

It's that time of year again. We are bringing in tons of greens. For example, one day this week I went out at about 11:00 am and picked a handful of lettuce, baby bok choi, sweet peas, radishes, and green onions and mixed it all together for a salad for lunch.

We ordered a scale to keep track of the amount of veggies we bring in. We keep it on the counter and weigh everything before putting it away. We are keeping record of it all on a clip board for now but I plan on charting it as we get in more food.

For the first weigh in we measured 11.5 oz of spinach, 26 oz of sweet peas, 9 radishes, 22 oz lettuce, 15 oz baby bok choi, 1.5 lbs of bigger bak choi, 1 lb young turnip greens.

And our spinach is huge.

We loved looking at it so much we just had to take a picture! Is it  because of the compost tea?

This is the bak choi bed. This is an asian green that we use just like the other greens--in stir fries, steamed or chopped really thin in salads. We like it because it is a more heat tolerant than salad greens and more tender than traditional southern greens.

Here's the lettuce bed.

I got a new lens for my birthday and tried it out on some flowers from the yard. These are daisies that we planted last summer. Beautiful, right?

Spring Gardening (April)

I love this time of year. I get to harvest fresh salads and greens every morning! I take my basket outside and pick the biggest heads of butter crunch and red leaf, a few leaves of chard, kale, or collards, some mesculin mix, and a head of broccoli (that's what's pictured below). We should have enough planted to do green harvests like this for another month. I store all this in the fridge for the day then wash and prepare with dinner tonight. I'll add some nuts, fresh green onions, and oil and vinegar. Yum!The winter/spring garden is nice because there aren't as many bugs and pests out yet. The onions, potatoes, and garlic don't require much water or extra feeding. Basically they go in the ground and we don't really worry about them till harvest which should be coming soon.

This is just a picture of another harvest from a few days ago. Being in the garden with all the colors, textures, and sounds is such a nice way to start the day!
This is a portion of the broccoli bed which is growing nicely.
Here's a row of lettuces, cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccolli, and onions.
Lettuce up close.



Originally posted April 27, 2009

A Mother's Day Harvest and Summer Planting

As I mentioned in an earlier post we are keeping track of all the produce we harvest by weighing it and charting it on a clip board in the kitchen. Here is the harvest amounts from Sunday.

• 1.5 lbs collards
• 1 lb 4 oz kale (lacinato)
• 2.5 lbs lettuce (butter crunch and green leaf)
• 10 oz spinach
• 4 oz peas
• 1 lb 4 oz radish (or about 10)

Now you might be wondering what we do with all these greens! Stay tuned for recipes and ideas. Believe it or not by Wednesday night we have already gone through everything but a few ounces of lettuce and collards.


On Sunday, we also planted most of the summer veggies that we started from seed including zuchinni, yellow squash, trombone squash, cucumber, pole beans, cantelope, eggplant, basil, more Swiss chard and bok choi. I re-potted the tomatoes since we have to wait for garden space to come available. Okra, bush beans, sweet potatoes, and watermelon are still waiting to be planted.

Spring Gardening (May) Harvest

Here's another harvest from earlier this week. We are definitely eating enough servings of greens these days!
I mentioned that we'll be getting greens like this for a month. I want to clarify that it won't be exactly like this for very long. We are noticing that the broccoli is already flowering and some of the lettuce is already beginning to bolt, but we will be able to harvest other lettuce (planted in shady spots in the garden), kale and chard for some time.


I am a little surprised that the broccoli didn't last longer.  Both the broccoli and the lettuce that bolted were bought as seedlings from Lowe's so I'm not sure what varieties they are. Most of the lettuces that we ordered from Cook's Garden and started from seed are still growing and doing fine.

I took some more pictures of the garden for this week. These next two pictures were taken from the same spot. The one below is mostly cold season stuff -- lettuce, chard, kale, cabbage, brussel sprouts. We took up the broccoli salad greens that we had in the back left corner. They were attacked by flea beetles and never really formed any kind of broccoli-like head. Then, we put down some collard seedlings we started a while ago. Then, they were attacked by what we think were the flea beetle larvae. We found little black wormy caterpillar looking things eating the collards leaves. We tried to save them with diatomaceous earth but I think it was too late. There are a few collards left in that spot, and we put some hot peppers in with them. The peppers haven't been bothered by the beetles yet.

The next photo is of the middle three rows which are the classic summer veggies. The cukes, eggplants, tomatoes, squash,  basil, and cantelope were started from seed indoors. The bush beans and okra we direct seeded after the frost date. Things are looking pretty nice so far.  To the right of this picture are the onions, potatoes, garlic, lettuce and peas.
Here's a picture of the damage done by the flea beetles. These are baby eggplants that we started indoors. They are about 4-6 inches tall now. We also bought some bigger eggplant last weekend just in case we lose these guys.
We are using diatomaceous earth to control the flea beetles and it works really well. This organic treatment was recommended to us by our friends at Five Leaves Farm (the local CSA). It is a white powder that you can sprinkle on and around plants to keep any kind of small creatures/pests away. I've heard it being used for slugs, beetles, fleas, and even roaches around the home. It is made of the skeletal remains of tiny unicellular plants that are very sharp to a tiny pest. This is the first year that I've seen it at Lowe's hardware and you can also find it at a local nursery or seed and feed.

Below is our newly planted bed of peppers. Since we were only able to get a few peppers to grow from seed indoors we bought 4 different kids of pepper plants last weekend. We planted them here in this bed where we had winter greens. There are pole beans and snow peas growing up a trellis on the porch behind them.
Lastly, this is a bed of butternut squash and pole beans. I've also planted some seminole pumpkin seeds in the middle. We've never grown these pumpkins but a friend suggested them after having success with them last year. These pumpkins and the butternut squash are supposed to be less susceptible to the vine borer bug. We are hoping to win the battle against squash vine borers in this bed this year!


Originally posted May 5, 2009

Spring Garden Planting (March 2009)

Today is the first day of Spring and it has been a gorgeous day. I've been taking pictures throughout the week of some things we are doing in the yard. We have lots of winter stuff coming up in the 3 long rows that we have started. Most of them are transplants that we started from seed in January. We did have to replace a few of our plants with store bought ones. We had a hard freeze for several days after we planted and we lost a few. We were not discouraged and took it as a learning experience. Note: It is a good idea to check the weather and not plant during a week of hard freezes next year!

Here's a picture of the seed trays we started in early March.


Here's another picture of the garden from the other side. Our potatoes are starting to sprout (hills on the bottom left of picture). We got these seed potatoes from a neighbor who said he grew up on a farm and that we needed to plant them in February to get the best results. They were just potatoes that sprouted in his cabinet. They are all coming up. We had already bought about 10 lbs of organic seed potatoes. We'll have to find another place for them somewhere else in the yard. Onions (started in Feb.) are in middle bed and garlic (started in Nov.) all the way to right of picture.


Originally posted March 20, 2009