Monday, April 23, 2012

Harvest Monday....Brrrr

Well I am glad I didn't put the tomato, pepper, and eggplants in the ground a week ago when it was so nice.  It has been chilly here the last couple of days.  On Saturday it was nice for the first part of the day and I got some borlotti bean seeds in my new beds in front of the garden.  John also transplanted some of our raspberries into the new side of the yard beds he extended.  Last year when we got the retaining wall put in in the back of the yard, John put in a small retaining wall on the side of the yard near the fence line.  A neighbor gave us some raspberries and we put them in our first bed there. We acquired two grape vines through free cycle here and they have begun showing signs of life!  These are in the second fence line bed. This past weekend John did 2 more beds along the fence line--one with the raspberry transplants and we decided to put tomatoes in the last one.  I will have to take some pics of all of this and post them soon.

Last Thursday I had to re seed my Tuscan Kale and Swiss Chard--the transplants were way too delicate.  Perhaps they were too young as well.  The other problem was that they were my trial run in egg cartons and I didn't like it.  It dried out very fast and I noticed that the roots were attaching to the egg carton. I figured that I could have planted the carton in the ground, but worried that it wouldn't really degrade fast enough and then the roots wouldn't have room.

On to Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday.  We have been enjoying lettuce, fennel, and spinach salad from our overwintered veggies....need to do more of them for sure.  A new simple dressing we are enjoying is just EVOO, a little seasoned rice vinegar, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  Sometimes we add parmigiano region cheese.  Thanks to our friend Michele for that recipe! Also enjoyed Jamie Oliver's suggesting with the swiss chard greens and sautéed them with garlic (as usual) but also added the fennel tops, celery leaves, chives, and even a little bit of romaine lettuce.  It was very yummy.
Lettuce, Spinach, and Fennel Salad

Hey Gardening crew out there... what are your favorite and most successful lettuces?  



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4 comments:

  1. Mary HysongApril 23, 2012 at 10:23 AM

    nice harvests! Sounds like you are quite busy around your place. Lettuce; this year I've been growing the Italian Misticanza which has several varieties, tho i don't know the names of them all. Some of the green heading types in the mix turn bitter long before the rest, so when that happens I just cut those out for the rabbits and keep on with the rest. At the moment I'm experimenting with green and red salad bowl as they aren't supposed to get bitter in hot weather; we shall see!

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  2. Patricia Burroughs aka PooksApril 23, 2012 at 10:59 PM

    I'm very new at this. Our red and green leaf lettuce did nicely, though.

    http://planetpooks.com/?p=4552

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  3. AndreaApril 24, 2012 at 5:59 AM

    Its always a little hard to decide when to plant out new seedlings,one of the challenges for gardeners. Your salad dressing sounds very tasty ..........
    My favorite lettuce are the ones that you can just pick the outer leaves as you need, ones that have preformed best include Red Oak leaf, Rossa Di Trento, Golden lettuce and red and green Cos.

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  4. Diary of a TomatoApril 24, 2012 at 8:37 AM

    I'd wondered about growing seedlings in egg cartons... and if the seedlings might also have a difficult time breaking through if started in eggshells...

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