Weekly Garden Update

Carrot Harvest

This week we harvested a few carrots where they needed thinning, and lots of lettuce and kale (is this sounding familiar?).

Lettuces

Red Winter Kale and Mustard

Lacinato kale

The overwintered Lacinato kale which had been bolting some started bolting like crazy this week so we cut 5 of the 8 overwintered plants at ground level (the remaining 3 aren’t bolting quite as much yet).  The overwintered Red Winter kale started to bolt a little this week so we cut some of it along with some Southern Giant Curled Mustard that made it through the winter.  The pictures do not include several handfuls of kale that we gave to our neighbor who helps us with the garden when we’re out of town.

After the Harvest

Even More Kale Remaining

The kales we got from http://cordarogarden.blogspot.com/ and the Chinese mustard we got from http://nycgardening.blogspot.com/ which we sowed in place in mid-February are now officially at the “seedling” stage rather than just “germinated.”  Some the the French Breakfast radishes we also got from http://nycgardening.blogspot.com/ are also looking like they’re almost ready to harvest.

French Breakfast Radishes

Kale seedlings

Mustard growing

The various lettuces continue to produce all the lettuce we want.  The mizuna has also been bolting but is still quite edible so we’ve still been harvesting it.  One of us has been taking a salad to work for lunch almost everyday plus we have two or three salads with dinner over the course of the week.  We’ve also been harvesting a few spinach leaves each week to be torn into the lettuce salads.  Head lettuce that we planted at the end of February is also coming up.

We’re not sure if our overwintered cabbage plant (only one survived the voles) and Brussels sprout plants are going to actually produce as they appear to be starting to bolt.  We had some temperatures well into the 70s in the last couple of weeks so that may be a factor.

The snow peas, especially, but also the sugar snap peas continue to grow up their trellises.  Hopefully we’ll get some pods in about a month or so.

We moved the celery seedlings and some of the tomato seedlings into the sunroom (which is also our home office) because we needed to make room under the lights in the basement seed starting area.  We’ll take these celery and tomato seedlings out to the screened-in south-facing porch on days where temperatures are at least into the 50s and bring them in at night.  The celery seedlings, which make up the largest number of the seedlings that are now “in the house,” are scheduled to be transplanted out in mid-April so hopefully they’ll continue to do well with this new 3-week regime.

Starting the Asparagus Bed

In other news…we decided this was the year to start an asparagus bed.  We had to cut down a very old oak tree in January because it was partially hollowed out and within range of the house if it were to come down (it was about 80-100 feet tall).  Cutting down the tree has opened up more unshaded area and we decided “there’s no time like the present” to start the asparagus bed we’d talked about as a longer-term garden wish (along with more fruit trees, a strawberry bed, and possibly raspberries; although these projects are not in the cards this year).  We decided to go the raised bed route and made the bed 4 feet x 12 feet x 12 inches tall.  We installed the bed this weekend after tilling the area and digging down a few inches as well since an asparagus bed is a fairly permanent thing.  We ordered 30 two-year Jersey Knight crowns from gurneys.com and hope to receive them this week.  If all goes well, we’ll be able to harvest some asparagus next spring!

How are things coming along in your garden?

Cabbage Seedling

Lettuce Seedling

Beets!

Tags: asparagus, Gardening, kale, Kitchen Garden, North Carolina, Orange County, raised boxes, Seedlings, Southern, Victory Garden