June 5th 2012

Garden Bounty


The garden has definitely started to pump out some good food.   In the past week we have eaten peas, green beans, radishes, lettuce, and the mixed asian stir fry greens.

For the radishes, we made a soup out of the radish greens which until last week, I did not even know you could eat.  It was not the best thing I have ever ate, but it was pretty good for something that was almost going to be tossed into the compost.

Updates in back

• The cherry tomato plant has a few tiny green tomatoes on it.   
• A few strawberries have matured, but they keep getting eaten by squirrels.   When I build the tomato cage, I'm going to have to bring in the strawberries.  
• One of the pepper plants that I never planted in the ground (still in the seed starting tray) started to flower, so I transferred 4 of them into the shrub bed on the north side.   It should be an interesting experiment.
• The Asian stir fry greens mix was starting to shade out the peppers in that bed, which is why they had to get cut.   They were delicious, and now peppers are getting much more sun.  
• The radishes were getting so big they were starting to knock over the garlic.  That was the main reason I pulled them.  The garlic now has room to breath again.   
• The first planting of snap peas is starting to dry out.   The second planting is producing nicely.  
• The green beans are going strong now.  We have picked about 30 or 40 at this point, and some of the younger plants have not even started to flower yet.   We should be good for quite a while.     

Updates in front

• The pole beans finally made it past a week.   I think the sheer number of the beans planted had a big role to play in the success.   At least 5-10 of the 20-25 beans I planted got eaten, but around 10-15 made it
• The summer squash also made it this time, although I don't think any of them were eaten. Maybe it was the sluggo, wood ashes, and/or the cage.  All 10 of them made it.  I uprooted 3 of the 10 and planted them in another spot.  
• The cucumbers did not have nearly the same luck.  Almost all of them were eaten.   
• The butternut squash (from seed) all seem to be doing really well.  
• The acorn squash (from Home Depot) is starting to flower, and looks really good.  
• The cantaloupe true leaves got eaten at first, but I think they might be staging a comeback.  We'll see.