Harvest Monday, 4/30/18

The last harvest of pea shoots from a 48 cell tray. It's much too late to plant peas at this point, we're well on our way to warmer weather this week. They're calling for temperatures in the 80's in the next few days (26.7 degrees Celsius).

I went ahead and planted seed potatoes that were purchased from a big box store a month ago. Poor sad dried up tiny seed potatoes. These are Adirondack Blue. My husband and I had a lengthy discussion on whether the planters he dug out of the attic would be put to better use raising potatoes or carrots.

The seed potatoes from the autumn mix bag were even sadder than the Adirondacks. I do worry that I buried them too deep, will these tiny potatoes have enough energy to send their shoots up through the soil strata? We'll find out.

I have sweet potatoes making slips on the front porch. We were in Nashville last week and I found Japanese Purple sweet potatoes at an Asian/Latin market. Only the small specimens looked any good, hopefully the little Purple will be able to make slips. I do have a Beauregard sweet potato already making slips.

Please join us at Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres, where gardeners are joyfully celebrating this busy time that is spring.

Harvest Monday, 4/22/18

Kale and kale flowering buds. This is about a third of what we harvested on Saturday.

Spinach salad with pea shoots, raisins, and cashews.

We cleared out the garden on Saturday. I picked a ton of overwintered kale, spinach, and turnip greens, while the kiddo and husband dug up some carrots. We had hoped to till soon but it rained all Sunday and more is expected this week, so we'll probably end up planting late just like last year. It's been a very wet cold spring.

The carrots were seeded in the fall and grew slowly over the winter, and now we have a fifteen foot bed of baby carrots. They're excellent cooked with their young leaves. (My husband had accidently mowed down their tops in March.)

I had seeded a flat of peas last month to get an early start on a spring garden, but since it's much too late for that we've found that pea shoots are wonderful in salads. It makes me curious about the world of microgreens. I believe Dave at Our Happy Acres grows sunflower sprouts which looks very intriguing to me.

Most of the tomatoes and peppers have been potted up and they're growing quickly in the greenhouse. I've been debating about potting up the onions which have been in a 72 cell tray for two months, I'd much rather put them in the ground but either way they'll need to be fed soon.

Please join us for Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres. A place where irrepressible gardeners share their harvests and what they've been preparing in the kitchen.