Spring Retrospect.

Yesterday we harvested all our remaining kale. It was starting to bolt and flower. We had a nice little assembly line going on with Mike in the garden cutting leaves while I was preparing the giant stockpot and iced down sink to blanche the harvest. Then, while I blanched and cooled and dried and packed Mike finished up in the garden and puled up the three foot high kale stumps. In the end we had three gallon size bags packed full of kale that went into the freezer. The garden calendar says to start planting seeds for overwintering kale starting July 15^th!

That brings me to something new I need to start doing since we have gone through a “season” in the garden so far. That season being Spring. We made it through a round of cool-weather veggies and are starting to get into the warm-weather veggies. So, what are my thoughts?

1. I planted waaay too much kale. I put in rows of kale and thinned them down as the season went. For the overwintering I am just going to plant a few seeds on a handful of mounds and thin to one plant per mound. Four or five kale plants will be more than enough for the two of us.

2. I planted waaaaaaaay too much lettuce. Although lettuce heads are really cute they aren't that versatile. You can really just eat salads or have them on sandwiches. If you know something else to do with lettuce, or you want some lettuce, please let me know.

3. I will plant more peas next time. I did a small section of the beck fence this year; maybe three feet for each variety. It is yielding very well, but I would like some more. Plus it grows up the fence and makes a nice natural screen and I would like it to go along more of the fence. Plus I discovered that peas are awesome, and I am surprised at how many dishes I can squeeze them into. So, more peas.

4. I was pretty happy with the radishes this year. There was a time when it seemed like all we had was radishes, but they were more versatile than I ever knew too. I planted one last row of radishes a few weeks ago, but I think it was too late and the weather had already turned too warm. This time around they aren't plumping.

   4b. Oh, and the spinach. I was happy with the spinach too. I was worried all spring that I would run out, so I think I tended to use it sparingly, which I didn't need to do. They took off once they had a good foothold.

We are now getting into the summer crops. Last night we had a nice make-shift dinner with broccoli, peas and chard from the garden. And we got our first two zucchini flowers opening up yesterday. I think I'm going to add to my to-do list for today to walk down to the nursery and get some tomato cages. They are starting to take off now that the sun has stuck around for more than a couple days.