Harvest Monday ......5/16/2011

It's the same harvest here this week, more letttuce. I only picked two nice heads of the lettuce. I'm trying to hold off picking all of the bigger heads of lettuce as long as I can. The second sowing of lettuce has a while to go before it will be ready. Which reminds me that I should sow some summer lettuce this week.

This is the Italian variety....seeds from in-laws trip to Italy last spring. It is very pretty and good tasting too!

Total Harvest for the week: 8 oz. of lettuce

Stop by Daphne's Dandelions our host of Harvest Monday to see what is growing in veggie gardens around the globe!

The Plots on May 13

This morning I finished turning Bed #3 (Tomato Alley) over again and removing some weeds. This bed does not seem to have the weed problem that I have in Beds #1 & 6. I am planning to plant the tomatoes there tomorrow. The weather is supposed to be over cast and not as hot as we have had this past week. It should be perfect weather for planting the tomatoes.

Tomato Alley almost ready for planting. The dark spots are some manure that I had left in a bucket. This will be spread around a bit more before I put the tomatoes in.

Savoy Cabbage...looking good! The white powder you see in many of the pics is diatomaceous earth. I really need to get some BT tomorrow for the plots.

I'm not sure which variety of purple cabbage this is. I didn't take notice when I took the picture.

A few of the Calabrese Broccoli are forming some heads!!!

The Weedy Pot Garden

I took the all of the pots off of the Broccoli, Cabbage & Brussels Sprouts. I left the pots on the cauliflower since they were planted much later. I will remove them when the plants get bigger.

The potatoes are coming up really well. The Caribe reds on the left are smaller then the Kennebecs on the right. Yesterday I had quite a few Colorado Potato Beetles around the plants, today nothing. Yesterday, I also removed some orangish eggs from the underside of many of the leaves. Every single beetle got squished...EG would be very proud of me! I really need that BT for the potato plants. Next year I am going to plant all of the potatoes at home and plant the garlic at the plots. That will help with the beetle problem.

Some insect has been nibbling on the the Oregon Giant & Mammoth Melting Snow Peas in Bed #2.

The eggplant and peppers are doing well. They have a little wind damage...but that is expected there. They should be toughened up now.

These are the Carouby de Maussane Snow Peas. They are doing much better then the other Snow Peas. The Sugar Magnolia Purple Snap Vine Peas and Little Marvel Peas seem to be untouched so far.

You can now see The Little Marvels coming up all along the edge of  Bed #5 where I also have the Bell Peppers & Kohlrabi planted.

My neighbor who gave me the Calla Lily bulbs is going to bring me some compost....he is such a nice guy! Another neighbor brought me some really nice containers for carrying water. They are going to be needed since we may not be able to have any type of water catching system. There is a big meeting at the plots on Monday evening regarding some "New Rules"....it's going to be interesting! We are still going to bring a few 55 gallon drums to the plots. Some of the guys have pumps and go to the creek and fill barrels on the back of their trucks. They will fill your barrels with water if you ask. What a nice community of people at the gardens!

Look what I found!!

An itsy bitsy teeny weeny cherry tomato!

It's on the Matt's Wild Cherry tomato plant.

Harvest Monday.......5/9/2011

This week I had my first harvest from the plots. Although that may sound exciting, it was due to early bolting. Almost of all my Pak Choi both here at home and at the plots had started to flower. Last year it was very warm and I had the most beautiful plants. I am hoping that the later planted Baby Choi & Tatsoi will do much better.

The total weight of all the tiny bolting Pak Choi was only 12 oz. I have to say that it was a real disapointment. I did make a wonderful dinner with it though...Spiced Chicken with Pak Choi. The recipe is posted here.

This is a picture from last year's post. It's a really great dish!

I also harvested a nice head of lettuce which was made into a Ceasar Salad for lunch. The recipe for the dressing can be found here.

Total Harvest for the week: 1 lb.

Pak Choi - 12 oz.

Lettuce - 4 oz.

Stop by Daphne's Dandelions, our host of Harvest Monday to see what is going on in veggie gardens around the globe!

Dang Rabbits!!!

I have really been pushing my luck with the one garden bed next door. After selling the house I had only intended to use the one small bed for some early potatoes this year. Therefore I removed all of the bunny fencing around two of the beds late in the winter. Later I decided to plant snow peas around the big bed. The peas were growing fine and I had run out of bunny spray. Every day I would watch a really big bunny in the yard and each and every time it would go right by the peas. Well my luck ran out!

Here are the peas four days ago.

This is what they looked like this morning...all 16' of them! They are all about 6" high now. Well, at least they are even!

Before we went out for Mother's Day breakfast, I put chicken wire on both sides of the peas. When we got home I made those sweet little bunnies a nice spray of cayenne pepper, hot sauce and water. I hope they enjoy that!