peas, carrots, and potatoes!
I harvested my first shell peas yesterday. And new potatoes, and a few small carrots. They were all planted mid-March in raised beds, during that strange early warm spell. This is a much earlier first-harvest than I'm used to. To celebrate, I made a nice small meal of new potatoes fried in a little butter, tossed with steamed veg (peas, carrots, beets, a few bits of flowering kale, and asparagus) and garden-fresh parsley and chervil. I took a picture, but...there's a knack to food photos, and I don't have it yet; it looks way more appetizing in person.
There won't be as many peas as I'd hoped - someone tried to de-tangle some vines from the trellis, and bent&killed some of them. Seems like I need to re-learn that lesson every year: get the support structures in place long before they're needed and then leave them alone.
The Alrite spinach has bolted, and the tatsoi, and the Regiment spinach is just starting to bolt, but the chard and kales are still doing well. I've had my usual mediocre luck with beets, turnips, and flowering brassicas - a very small harvest so far. I think much of this has to do with planting them too close together, and indeed where I've thinned they're doing better. The fava bean blossoms have turned black and are podding up now (first time I've grown favas - when I saw the shriveled black blossoms, I worried something was wrong, but apparently it's the normal order of things).
Last weekend - in humid mid-80s heat, I finally dug up and amended the rest of the garden (eight 5' x 25' wide rows). This weekend - in humid low-90s heat, I planted the rest of the heat-loving crops: cucumbers, zucchini, squash, melons, beans, herbs (sweet basil, fenugreek, Thai basil, papalo, and more Thai basil). It's supposed to be in the 60s the rest of the week - so it goes.
Still plenty to do: weeding, taking out the early stuff that's done (or never did well), sticking second plantings in anywhere I can find space, mulching, covering the paths between the wide rows so they stop getting so overgrown, putting in the rest of the drip irrigation, etc. But I feel good now that at least one planting of everything is in the ground.
And, I start getting CSA box in two weeks. Which means next weekend I need to get the kitchen ready for a summer of hardcore veg-prep.
There won't be as many peas as I'd hoped - someone tried to de-tangle some vines from the trellis, and bent&killed some of them. Seems like I need to re-learn that lesson every year: get the support structures in place long before they're needed and then leave them alone.
The Alrite spinach has bolted, and the tatsoi, and the Regiment spinach is just starting to bolt, but the chard and kales are still doing well. I've had my usual mediocre luck with beets, turnips, and flowering brassicas - a very small harvest so far. I think much of this has to do with planting them too close together, and indeed where I've thinned they're doing better. The fava bean blossoms have turned black and are podding up now (first time I've grown favas - when I saw the shriveled black blossoms, I worried something was wrong, but apparently it's the normal order of things).
Last weekend - in humid mid-80s heat, I finally dug up and amended the rest of the garden (eight 5' x 25' wide rows). This weekend - in humid low-90s heat, I planted the rest of the heat-loving crops: cucumbers, zucchini, squash, melons, beans, herbs (sweet basil, fenugreek, Thai basil, papalo, and more Thai basil). It's supposed to be in the 60s the rest of the week - so it goes.
Still plenty to do: weeding, taking out the early stuff that's done (or never did well), sticking second plantings in anywhere I can find space, mulching, covering the paths between the wide rows so they stop getting so overgrown, putting in the rest of the drip irrigation, etc. But I feel good now that at least one planting of everything is in the ground.
And, I start getting CSA box in two weeks. Which means next weekend I need to get the kitchen ready for a summer of hardcore veg-prep.