Spring Garden Well Under Way

written by Yvonne

One day these berry canes were just bare sticks. Next day, poof! They sprouted leaves. Tom chopped them all the way to the ground last fall. We'll see if they produce berries this year or not. Hopefully they will.

Another surprise? The oregano came back in the herb box and it's growing fast too. I cut some for drying because we are all out.

The three types of peas (snow, snap, cow) I planted two weeks ago have ALL sprouted. There are about 15 plants in all that have come up. One set of peas I forgot to plant were crowder peas Dan (Tom's brother) brought us last year. I'll get those planted this weekend or the next.

It's hard to see, but the small rows of green are lettuce. We've gotten some good rain over the last several days which has really made everything spring up.

These carrots were actually planted at the end of last fall. They survived the winter under the hoop houses and are now coming up.

Seeds were started in pots for the following items: cilantro, basil, thyme, chives, dill, two kinds of summer squash, two varieties of cucumbers, six kinds of tomatoes. Seeds were sown directly in the beds for beets and Swiss chard.

The rain really brought on a lot of spinach. Before the current plants bolt, I wanted to harvest as much as possible.

All of the collard plants began to bolt (even though it hasn't been that hot, so I'm not sure what's up with that) so I harvested all I could get from them before pulling them out. The two Russian kale plants still looked good so I left them in the ground but there wasn't enough to harvest this week.

This is the oregano to be dried after getting a quick bath.

This week's harvest produced four bags of spinach and three bags of collards. Guess what we're eating this week? Green, greens and more greens!