Homegrown Salads

We've been eating salads like this every night. There's plenty of lettuce in the garden now and a few cucumbers. These tomatoes aren't from the garden, but they are from Michigan, since I got them at the local farm stand.

We should have tomatoes soon - here's my sungold. Should I pick it today or not?

Garden Log #3

The front yard garden bed was planted on July 12 with the following vegetables.

Seeds:

Kohlrabi Purple & White Vienna Blend (Brassica oleracea)

Radish French Breakfast (Raphanus sativus)

Turnip Purple Top White Globe (Brassica rapa)

Bok choy White Stem (Brassic rapa Chinesis Group)

These vegetables were chosen because of their short growing season and the limited amount of time left in Michigan before frost.

I also planted these transplants:

9 Cabbage Bonnie Hybrid

1 Sweet Banana Pepper

1 Mammoth Jalapeno

1 Jalapeno

2 California Green Pepper

3 Black Beauty Eggplant

1 Japanese Eggplant

28 Little Gem Lettuce

Butterhead lettuce transplanted on June 30

Herbs planted July 16:

Lemon Thyme

Silver-Edged Thyme

Chives

Greek Basil

Dill

Italian Parsley (4)

Rosemary

I also planted a variety of annual flowers in the bed including impatiens, marigolds, petunia, allysum, and vinca.

All transplants, except the lettuce, were fertilized with a sprinkle of time release fertilizer in the planting hole.

Plucking Radishes and Lettuce Thinnings

Pulling those little radishes out of the pot was really a lot of fun and very satisfying.  I enjoyed it tremendously and can't wait to do it again!  

I finally got around to thinning my Little Gem lettuce, and the thinnings provided a nice amount of lettuce for dinner.  Then I transplanted a bunch into the front yard garden bed, which has become my overflow vegetable plot.

Cut And Come Again Lettuce

I love the name of this type of lettuce.  They could have called it replicating, or regenerating, or duplicating lettuce.  But instead it's a simple "cut and come again", which tells you exactly what to do.  You cut it.  You come again.  You cut it.  You come again.  You cut it.  You come again.  Yep, 3 times.

This is the mesclun mix that I planted early on in the same pot as my brandywine tomato.  I planted it June 6 so it's been about a month.  It was a little early to harvest since the leaves were not as big as I would have liked, however, they were getting pretty tall and leggy.  Next time I will plant them in a separate container rather than with the tomato.  The salad I ate last night was pretty good, but a little stemmy.  (In case you didn't know, this means that there were lots of lettuce stems in my salad.  Probably more than would be considered desirable. )

Seedling Update

Lettuce!

Radish!

Can't Resist Buying Lettuce

There are so many varieties to choose from...

I found a good selection of lettuce here:

And there was more lettuce here:

Soon we will see lettuce here!

First Salad?

Mesclun Gourmet Greens Mix planted in half of a large pot with a  tomato plant on 6/6/09.  The seed packet says 7-10 days to germination and mine came up in 3 days.

Baby's Leaf Hybrid Spinach planted in the other half of the tomato pot on the same date.  It says 7-14 days for seedlings and mine came up in 6.

I planted these seeds at dusk on a very chilly evening after returning from the store.  The seed packet is promising me 30 days to harvest for the spinach and 40 days for the lettuce, so each day counts!  I'll be planting more lettuce soon - probably at certain intervals over the summer to guarantee fresh, green, delicious salads all season.