Delicious and Nutritious.

Last night was one of the first meals in a long time that was largely made from the garden.  Frittata with home grown chard, leek and garlic (plus store bought eggs and asparagus) and a salad with homegrown radishes and dressing made with homegrown garlic and shallots.  The lettuce could have come from the garden, but I still had a store bought head in the fridge to use. 

It was delicious and nutritious.  In my forming tradition, I planted too much lettuce at once again this year.  There are a lot of salads in our near future.

The Surprise of Spring.

I've complained a lot about the poor production last year. Summer lasted about two weeks. This winter was very mild too. Although earlier this year it seemed spring would never reach us, we finally made the switch. Temperatures are at least in the 50's now and we are having sun breaks nearly everyday. Even yesterday, which had a terrible bike ride in steady rain and gusty winds in the morning, resulted in a pleasant ride home with light sun and scattered clouds. It's getting nicer and the garden knows it.

There were a lot of plants I just left at the end of last year out of frustration. I didn't even want to deal with them and they could die slowly over the winter and do what they do. Turns out, they didn't die over the winter and we are already harvesting! Let's have a look around:




Little broccolis that never made it over a couple inches last year have revealed themselves as purple sprouting. The heads aren't large, but for being ignored and unweeded for the winter, I'm pretty happy with that.





The chard survived with flying colors. The red chard last year never got very large and we didn't harvest much, but they have suddenly swelled this spring. I gave them a nice thinning last weekend and it looks like we could start harvesting more leaves already.




I bought this rosemary back when I lived in big house with a bunch of roommates and I started my first real garden on my own. I kept the rosemary in a pot on the back porch and it moved here with me. The pot broke and half the root system of the rosemary was exposed. It sat like that for an entire season because I didn't know where to put it (and I was lazy). We finally settled with a spot on the corner of the house and it did well in the ground for a bit. We aren't sure what happened, but half the plant died. Perhaps it got waterlogged over a wet winter, I'm not sure. Rosemary is a very hardy bush and grows well here. People all around have four foot and more diameter rosemary bushes in their yards. I'm hoping the flowering is a good sign and it will grow big and strong and odorous this year.





Speaking of perennial herbs, the oregano is returning. I also bought this oregano when I lived in the big house with roommates and it has traveled with me and received equally poor treatment as the rosemary, but it keeps coming back. I put it in the ground last year, but it had been potted its whole life prior. It seems to like the extra room.




There is hope yet that I will successfully grow a cabbage. These should have been harvested last fall, but they never grew more than a few inches. Looking good so far for a late spring harvest.



We might even get a harvest from our cover crop. I put out clover and fava beans as a nitrogen fix to cover the bare areas at the end of summer last year. The fava beans took hold well and they are now flowering. It would be a nice surprise to be able to get a small harvest from something unintended.

February Garden.

A quick glimpse at one of the only keepers in the February garden. Leeks planted last Spring are still holding strong.




I put them in between tomato plants and rows of carrots. The tomatoes got so large that they blocked out the sun to the tiny leeks and they never did grow. The leeks looked the same as the day I put them in the ground when I went to pull out the tomatoes in the Fall. I've let them keep going over the winter and I think we'll have some Spring leeks in the end.

On a sad note, we've finally eaten through our carrot supply and I've gone back to buying carrots at the store.

A small victory on Sunday morning, however, when we wanted to make a nice breakfast but didn't have anything more than eggs and potatoes in the house Mike went out and snipped a small bushel of red chard that has survived our cold temps this winter better than its yellow chard neighbor and we had a delicious breakfast with a serving of veggies. It gives me hope for a good garden this year.

Report Card.

Planted in the garden today:

• 1 row Northern Lights Swiss Chard
• 1 row Rainbow Carrots
• 1 row Napa Carrots
• 1 row Bloomsdale Savoy Spinach

Harvested from the garden today:

• Last batch arugula (it's starting to flower. Seeds soon!)

Delayed from the garden today:

• Sowing more peas
• Transplanting cabbage and broccoli to garden

I ran out of time to sow the peas. I'll have to get up extra early tomorrow for that one. As for the cabbage and broccoli starts, they are delayed due to weather. The next two days are highs in the 40's and raining. I'm going to wait until this little chilly snap is gone and we are back in the 50's. I don't want to freak the little guys out.

The garden goes on without me.

Well, I'm back. In my time away I got to visit a few friends' and family's gardens. I spent almost the entire time out of the kitchen (with the exception of making my now patented guacamole). I flew 3,000 miles and drove over 1,000. With my first day back in Portland I am jumping back into it with lots of veggie harvesting, weed pulling, garden cleaning, baking and cooking.

I'll have to write about my travels later as my garden exploded while I was gone!

Have you ever seen spinach bolt? Neither had I. Check it out. Aaaah!

I spent this afternoon pulling all the giant spinach stalks out of the garden and harvesting the leaves I could. This gave me two giant bowls packed full of spinach, most of which I am going to freeze to enjoy over the summer. Mike already harvested and froze another giant bag of spinach while I was gone.

There are broccolis now! I find the broccoli plants a little annoying, because for the little heads that are on it right now the plants are about 20 times bigger. I'm hoping the harvest from these guys is worth the space they take up.

There are tomato flowers!

I need to find a recipe for chard soon.

The carrot tops look like real carrot tops now instead of whispy little weeds like they did before I left.

Lettuces are doing great. We are going to have to start having salads more often.

The peas are perhaps the most exciting. Before I left they were just starting to grow and I was afraid I would miss out on all the fresh peas. Boy, was I wrong. There is a container in the freezer already of fresh picked peas from when I was gone, and I went out today and harvested another big batch. I ate one and just about fell over. It was one of those moments when you realize you have never had a pea before in your entire life. You have only had some bastardized, dumbed-down version of a pea that is a mass produced and sold in a bag. My eyes have been opened. I love peas.

Some of the cherries are already starting to turn red. We think they might be Rainier cherries, which is a little disappointing since we both love Bing cherries. Damn.

The herbs are taking off and doing well.

Look, ma! My cilantro is big!

I'm going to have to make some Mexican food soon so I can put some more seed in the pot. Is there a Mexican dish with chard, spinach and peas? Hmmm....

I'm especially happy to be home because I get to see this every day again.

Until next time when I will cover Texas Gardens: part deux, Colorado gardens and riding horses is the rain.

Picture Update - May!

The last time I did a big picture update was almost two months ago. I have a lot to catch up on! Here we go---

Now that the days are getting longer and the temperatures getting warmer (barely), the growth is taking off! Take a look!

I've thinned a bit of the kale so far and the remaining ones are really getting big. We have had a lot of heavy wind the last few weeks though, and a lot of them are slanted and now growing sideways. Whatever. They're still growing, right? They just aren't quite as pretty and uniform.

The spinach is awesome. I realize now that I did not allot enough space for spinach in the garden this year, and I will give it more room next year. I love spinach because you can use it in just about any style of food; Italian, Indian, Mexican, American, Greek, and on and on. Plus, it's great as a fresh salad, on a sandwich or wilted by itself or in a dish.

Spinach and onions, living happily together.

And, yes, this is ONE spinach plant.

The lettuces are coming in pretty well now. I impulse bought a third lettuce variety at the store the other day, which I'm going to squeeze in somewhere. It's a fast-maturing miniature butterhead. I'm pretty excited about that one.

I have also realized that I've been keeping to my garden calendar a little too closely. Every two weeks I have a note to do the next sowing of lettuce or chard or carrots, but I am trying to listen to the garden a little more than my calendar now, as I realize I'm going to have way too much lettuce all at one time and I should really space it out some more.

The chard is starting to get it's true leaves. Yeah!

The broccoli finally took and it is getting big! It's also been a victim of the wind, however, and they are all kind of growing sideways.

This must a sign that summer is fast approaching, as today was the day to transplant my zucchini starts. I put three in the ground and I may regret this. They tend to grow to gigantic proportions.

The pear tree is starting to grow pears!! Apparently we are going to have red pears instead of green. What a nice surprise!

As for my $3.99 roses; they are on the verge of blooming. You can see some of the rose inside this bud ready to burst forth.

And Lemon in the window.

We had our BBQ last weekend and it went really well. I made buns and veggie patties from scratch and they were good. Although, I'm going to have to work on this hamburger/sausage bun thing. They didn't rise nearly enough, so I had to improvise and pretend I meant to make sliders instead. But, they are pretty darn cute.

Going into the oven.

Done!

For my birthday Mike got me garden/rain boots! I've been wanting some, especially when I do my volunteer work at the Food Bank garden. It's a sloshy mess when it rains, which is most of the time, and my pants and meager hiking shoes get pretty covered by the time I'm done. Now I'm set!

Mike also really seems to like worms. This is why he is generally in charge of the worm compost bin. The other night he was outside and discovered the creepy-crawlies doing their thing in full-swing in the garden. He took some pictures. He brought a worm inside on his hand to show me. I screamed like a little girl and ran into the bedroom. Gross.

And, lastly, these pictures are mostly for my mom. I painted my living room! It's espresso brown, and I think it really ties things together. I (mistakenly) painted my kitchen some shade of chartreuse and the deep brown finally makes it look like I did it on purpose (pardon my mess).

On the last day of March.

It was surprisingly sunny today. After several days of downpours of rain and cold temperatures, there was a break today and I got my gardening for the week done. I harvested the rest of the first batch of radishes, which will be turned into dinner tonight (one more day without the grocery store!).

I re-sowed radish seeds to replace the ones I harvested. I sowed some more onions and our first outdoor lettuce seeds as well as chard, carrot and broccoli seeds. And, I transplanted my broccoli starters into the garden. This one was pretty exciting. I was so proud of my little guys. I raised them from seed in the safety and warmth of the living room, and now they are outside in the big, bad world of the front yard. Good luck, little broccolis, I hope you fare well.

And, lastly, I'm starting my pepper seeds inside. These will probably be a colossal failure as I just read about how large varieties don't do well in our climate and the two varieties I bought have the words “Giant” and “Grande” in their names. Oops. That's what I get for impulse buying seeds.

The fruit trees are doing their thing. The plum tree has lost it's flowers and is in leaf stage now, but the cherry tree is in full bloom.

And so is the pear tree in the front yard. This one is my favorite; maybe it's because it's at eye level, but I think the blooms are just beautiful.

Although the don't smell very good.

And the sad little apple tree, whose prune job makes you want to cut it down and start over, is starting to bloom too. I'm hoping with a few years of loving pruning we can get this guy back on track.