Harvests of Green!

In our square foot garden, we have 2 cubes of spinach (really 1.5, since half of one was taken over by rogue rutabagas), 1 cube of arugula, and 1 cube of different lettuce mixes. For the last little while, these four square feet give us a great cutting of greens every other day. I wash them in the salad spinner and store them in an old mesculun mix container. They are usually gone within the day, plucked out for sandwiches, salads, and omelets. I'm really floored by the lettuce so far. The Arugula is peppery without being bitter, which I find can sometimes be a problem. I don't have any clue what the other kinds of lettuce we're growing are called, but they are so flavorful! Alex agrees, and says the spinach from the garden is juicer than the stuff we've been buying.

Homegrown Salad Mix

We also took our first few cuttings from the collards in the patio pot yesterday, and used them in a rice pasta dish with lots of (local) cheese. Yum!

I'm cutting my veggies when they're a lot smaller than you'd buy them at the store for a few reasons. One, I don't want the pests to find them first! Two, I've heard overall yields are higher this way, since the plant keeps producing fruit if you cut early and often.

In the next week, the chard should be ready for a first harvesting of little tender leaves, and maybe the kale too.

We did some mulching yesterday, which makes the garden look messy and a little gross, but I'm hoping it will help reduce weeds and retain moisture in the soil. We've had some hot days, and the plants are complaining! The corn and beans are coming up, as is the winter squash, but no summer squash yet. Amaranth is also peeping up slowly in the new bed, but I can tell I did a crummy job of spreading seeds evenly, since the seeds were so tiny. They'll be in clusters, but there's not a lot I can do about that now.