Sprouts! Thinning Required

Thinning the seedlings is a necessary chore. Healthy, well-formed plants require plenty of growing room. Too many plants growing too close together must compete for nutrients, water, air, and root space. Over-crowding also leads to increased risk of disease.

Still, I hate pulling up those tiny seedlings, tossing them unceremoniously aside to dry up in the warm spring sun. So, I ate them! Very tasty... fresh and a bit spicy. I made a simple spring salad with over-wintered lettuce, sliced green onions, and a pile of these turnip and radish sprouts.

sugar snap peas down the middle
turnip and radish sprouts along either side

turnip and radish sprouts

over-wintered lettuce

Final Harvest of the Red Russian Kale

The red russian kale is at maximum maturity.

The plants are poised to bolt as spring progresses and temperatures increase.

We've had a minor problem with aphids this year, but nothing that a good salt water soak can't resolve.

That's a sink-full of kale, but it will cook way down...

Lost & Found

Ha ha! I wonder how many pairs of glasses I've lost in the garden. They slip out of my pocket, or fall off my head ...

I reach for them and they're gone!

Rouse found these yesterday, buried under leaf litter in the herb garden.

Spring Garden

Fabric row covers have done their job. The winter greens are nearly spent. Temperatures are rising. It's time to tidy up the garden and get ready for the next season.

Still some nice kale to harvest

Ugly spinach - attacked by aphids during warm spell
then suffered during seasonal cold spell

First task shore up the raised beds. Time has taken its toll. The frames of the raised beds are deteriorating and / or falling apart. Rouse the Spouse stepped in with his handy-dandy skills to make them usable again. Then he prepped the soil and we planted the beginnings of our spring garden.

Two types of potatoes this year:

German Butterball - golden russet-type, all-purpose potato with delicious buttery flavor and a tender flaky texture. 

French Fingerling - all-purpose potato with delicate pink skin and creamy yellow pink-splashed flesh, resistant to scab

Sugar Snap Peas, one row each of two dwarf varieties:

Sugar Daddy - the first modern stringless snap pea, 24" - 30" vines

Sugar Ann - extra early 3" snap peas on compact 2-foot vines that don't require trellising

On the long edges of the sugar snap bed, one row each:

Turnip - Tokyo cross hybrid, close to hakurie, the small rooted salad variety

Radish - early scarlet turnip white tipped

Divided another bed three ways:

Beets, cylindra - sweet flavor with dark red flesh, 8"long by 2" wide carrot-shaped roots veggie make for nice, regular slices.

Caribe Cilantro - dense bunches of aromatic dark green leaves with good bolt tolerance in the garden

Nevada Lettuce - heat tolerant, crunchy ribs with soft shiny green leaves forming a heavy head.

Planted one more bed of lettuces:

Gourmet blend of leaf lettuce (green romaine, red salad bowl, red romaine, tango, bibb, lolla rosa)

Buttercrunch - small, open but tightly bunched, 6" rosette that is fan-shaped rather than round. Dark green leaves and small compact hearts that blanch to an appetizing yellow color. Crisp and sweet. Slow bolting.

Plus, one Italian flat-leaf parsley plant next to the trimmed up rosemary plant.

The Garden Under Snow

Happy New Year

It's a happy day, indeed, when you can eat collards ... or tatsoi... or lettuce ... fresh from the garden on January 1!

Autumn Beauty

Out in the backyard, the winter garden is tucked in under a cover of leaves. Collards, kale and other greens that will over-winter show up as small patches of green. Soon, fabric row covers will be needed to fend off the cold.