The Garden After A Week Away

This was the harvest I came back to after 8 days away from the garden on our vacation. The broccoli and snap peas were finally ready to harvest- yea! The snaps are so good to eat just standing out in the garden all warmed from the sun...

As you can see, despite my planning, I've got tons of lettuce all ready at once. I've had to ask some family members to come and get some before it all goes to seed (or "bolts"). I do have some more younger plants coming along, but I hate to see any go to waste.

We are having a lot of salads this week...

Well, the corn will not be "knee high by the 4th of July" but at least it's in and up! I've got to thin this bed to about a foot between each plant. I always sow it rather thickly because corn is notorious for not germinating evenly and I've had huge gaps in the past when I was stingy with the seed.

Notice I did not come back to a corn patch covered in weeds. I tell you, I love this system!

Some of the cabbages will be ready in a few days. These are "Gonzales" mini cabbages. I like them because they take up less room, are ready earlier than full-size heads, and are the perfect size for our family because only two of us eat cabbage (I'll let you guess which two).

I had put another layer of straw on the potatoes before we left. They are now about 2 feet tall and some of the early varieties are blooming now.

When you see blooms, that's the clue that you can start looking for the small "new" potatoes. It's pretty easy to harvest the new potatoes with the straw- you just pull it back until you see some, gently pull them from the plant, and replace the straw. The biggest concern is to disturb the plant as little as possible, and since we're not using a shovel, there's very little disturbance.

The tomatoes are looking big and healthy. I took the spun cloth off from around the tomatoes when I came back and saw how big they were and the stretch of warm weather we will be having.

I have a couple of green tomatoes on my extra-early plants I planted early in Wall-O-Waters. The countdown begins...

Loads of snap peas are going to be ready in a few days. I'd already harvested the first pound before I took this picture. I love them fresh in the garden, raw in salads, and in stir-frys.

The lettuce is looking a little worse for wear. All those magazines show the pretty heads of different colors all in a row, but not what it looks like as you're harvesting them!

The butterhead in the front was supposed to be "all-season" and I thought it would last a little longer when it started warming up, but apparently not. The head at the very bottom is going to bolt in a day or two. Luckily, my brother and sister-in-law came and took it after I snapped the picture.

I tried some red romaine this year (you can see at the top of the picture). I don't like it as well- it doesn't form nice heads like the regular green romaine did for me. I grew a speckled romaine last year that was nice, so I'll try to find seed for that again.

Everybody who sees this bed always asks about it. This is the asparagus bed after I'm done harvesting. You are supposed to let the spears grow to provide food to the roots in order to get another good crop the next spring. That's why you can only harvest a mature asparagus bed for about 6 weeks.

This is what happens to the heads of asparagus spears if you let them grow. Since they are about 5 feet tall, they definitely need a bed of their own!

One last picture showing how I missed the bloom of this peony. I left just as the buds were starting to open, and came back to this. Never even got to have one in the house. Hmm...I have the prettiest iron urn that they would've looked great in.

Oh, well. There's always next year!

-Jami