Thursday 5 July 2012

Salad Days

Salad Greens

My garden is off to the races!  There is a time, after the first planted seeds germinate, when the garden is almost in a suspended state...then....suddenly.....it leaps into production.  The last several weeks I have been harvesting and enjoying garden salads, however, the high temps of the last couple of weeks has caused all my Romain/Cos lettuce to bolt.  I pulled it all yesterday and it went to the rabbits, they don't seem to mind bitter greens.  I was on the ball enough to have planted this beautiful, buttery-soft leaf lettuce a couple weeks after the Cos, it is now making it's way to my table along with corn salad and arugula.  I think I will be pulling the arugula over the next days, noticed some bolting yesterday, again, the rabbit clean-up crew will reap the benefits.
Yesterday, though hot, had me cleaning up the finished beds, adding manure to the soil and starting seeds once again, more salad greens and some late summer crops of beets, Swiss chard and summer squash.

This summer we have had both garden hits and a couple of misses.  I planted both Red and Spanish onions, the Spanish are doing great
Spanish onions and Arugula
While the red...not so much.  They went to seed a few weeks ago and flopped.  Only bonus is the flower heads have given me amazing photos, this one taken this morning, wow!
Blossom, red onions
Egg Plant leaf
This was our first year of Egg Plants, started from seed they looked beautiful, until, placed in the garden and invisible hoards of insects feasted on them every night.  I thought they were done, then the hot weather hit, they rallied, sent up beautiful new leaves, the stalks shot up and I am optimistic about harvesting them.
Another first in the garden is Broad Beans and Fennel, both started by us from seed and doing fantastic.  Peas went wild this year, they relish bunny poo manure, I have never seen peas like this before.  I have been picking and enjoying them daily the last couple of weeks.
Kale too joined the garden bed this year, it looks amazing, though seems to be enticing to the cabbage butterfly that flutters around it.  I look for caterpillars daily and any I see are plucked off and fed to the chickens.
And last, but certainly not least, a photo of Hexe, who would normally be whining from the garden gate if I had left her there while taking photos in the veg garden.  Instead she is sat on the porch wanting to go back inside, today is the first day she has started to nest, fingers crossed this means the pups are finally on their way, wish us luck.  
For those that want to follow Hexe's Nursery Blog, here is a link to it.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...