"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."
Robert Louis Stevenson




Showing posts with label speckles lettuce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speckles lettuce. Show all posts

Friday, February 28, 2014

We Have Rain! and Lots of Produce, too.



It has been raining since yesterday.  We should get at least 2 inches by the time the storm moves out on Sunday.  This is a very warm rain for February, it was 58 at 6:00 AM.  Hoping we don't have any flooding or mudslides!

I took the photos below on Wednesday.  Also picked a big batch of lettuces and onions before the rain started yesterday.  Lots of flowers blooming which I added to my salad.


Calendula

for my salad, Calendula, Nasturtiums, Oxalis and Salad Burnet

Arugula

2nd planting of Lacinato Kale

one of several Giant Mustard

Speckles Lettuce, one of our favorites this year.

Loquat tree is loaded with fruit, these should be ready in May.

Raised bed planted with lacinato kale, ruby and bright lights swiss chard.  Seedling of radish, collard greens, beets and carrots.

Tatsoi, beets and collard green sprouts (I think)

More Speckles lettuce and Lolla Rossa lettuce


Leaf lettuce that bolted in the heat. I will let this go to seed head and then save the seeds.

More Tatsoi, most have shot up seed heads so I may need to plant out more seedlings now that the rains have come. 

Onions and swiss chard I pulled from the bed along the driveway

Little Gem Romaine and Lolla Rossa lettuce from the bed along the driveway

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

More Goodies from the Garden Jan 2014 Garden Update


 Asian Pea Pods

 Lacinato Kale, finally recovered from the grasshopper feasting on them.  Cut leaves from the bottom up and not from the center top; that way they will keep growing upwards with new leaves to harvest. 

 Bright Lights Swiss Chard is doing well now and I am picking a few each week to thin them out. My parakeets love swiss chard!

 A volunteer tomato, probably the purple cherry we grew last year.  Several have come up and I am leaving them to see which one they will be.

 Lots of onions inter-planted with red Russian kale and Swiss chard. When I pull onions they will have more room.

 This is some Bright Lights Swiss Chard I transplanted from the onion area to give them more room. We eat a lot of Swiss Chard!

 I think this might be more beets.


Lolla Rossa Lettuce and Little Gem Romaine.  Lacinato Kale plants to the right, I sure hope I left enough space between the kale. 

 Close up of Speckles Butterhead lettuce, love this lettuce!

 Close up of Lolla Rossa Lettuce, another favorite of ours and it is so beautiful.  The leaves make wonderful wraps for a veggie taco. Those are more onions in-between the lettuce.  I plant onion sets all year round.

Close up of Little Gem Romaine Lettuce.

 My favorite mustard, Red Giant.  If picked when the leaves are small it can be added to salads, but I like the punch from the larger leaves and use it in a lot of my vegetable soups and stir-fry's.

My most recent bed of Rocket Arugula, planted in late November is ready to cut now.  If you cut instead of pulling up the plants of most leaf-type lettuce it will continue to send up new growth.  I have two sections of arugula and one is always ready for cutting while the other one is sending out new growth.  Keeps us with arugula for the entire fall through spring months, after that when the weather begins to warm it will send up seed heads.  I am a bit worried about my lettuces with this summer-like temperatures that we have had lately.  Today we warmed up to 83 degrees!

 Here is one of the raised beds that we planted out with some seedlings we bought at a local nursery that grows organic seedlings.  This will give me a jump on the smaller seedling that I planted out with seed in another bed.  These plants are much larger and will be ready to harvest by late February.  In this section we have 6 more lacinato kale plants ( I think I have 18 or more plants now at different stages of growth ), magenta swiss chard, mizuna mustard, tatsoi, red winter kale, and giant red mustard (1 of each).  Looking a little sad in the heat right now.

In this section is more Speckles buttercrunch lettuce, rouge d'hiver (a red) lettuce, a few tatsoi and a black seeded simpson lettuce.  

In this bare spot I seeded 2 more rows of the Parisienne carrots that I am growing in another bed.  More Chioggia beets, Collard Greens, a gourmet blend of beets and then seeded in between the lettuces on either side with french breakfast radish and Easter egg blend radish.

Here is a picture of the Parisienne carrots I picked today, along with some spring onions and a few Round Black Spanish Radishes. Not many carrots, but enough to go in our salad tonight!