Garden harvest
Jun. 7th, 2017 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrLate this morning it was still somewhat tolerable outside. So I took a wicker basket, a pair of gardening scissors and a sprinkler out to the backyard.
The "raised bed" (read re-purposed watering trough) was a riot of greens. The tomatoes in the plot looked mostly ok, but the basil was still kinda wilty.
So I set the sprinkler on our plot and went to work on the tub (fay and I call it that for shorthand). Some web research had shown that the big brown patches on the chard were infestations of a sort of beetle larva that lives *inside* the leaves.
So I spent some time carefully trimming out the infested parts, and sometimes just cutting off whole leaves. The chard plants were greatly reduced, but should survive.
I also trimmed some of the adjacent spinach leaves that looked like they'd gotten hit. No need to worry about *those* plants surviving!
This had taken a while because it was awkward to work around the plants, and I had trouble with my back. I finally dragged up one of the plastic chairs and sat down to work on things.
After the cleanup was done, I started harvesting things. Got all the ripe strawberries from the tub. I snipped a selection of leaves for salad, a few carrot leaves (some of the half-dozen rainbow carrots in the tub had *huge* clusters of leaves, I figured they could spare one or two each.
The chard wasn't up to harvesting. I got several large spinach leaves. Then I got to the six "salad" plants. An assorted of several plants sold together at the nursery. Fay has a post on what they are. I just call them yummy.
Harvested leaves as well as some buds and blossoms (don't them them going to seed this early) and I had enough for a salad. Actually, now that I've made it, I should have gone a bit lighter).
I shifted the sprinkler to the tub, and harvested some dandelion (volunteer crop :-) from the plot and a few strawberries.
We need to finish preparing the plot soon. Especially now that we have the last of the starts.
Gotta deal with the grass, and transplant the strawberries that are in places we don't want them (the strawberries in the tub came from the plot, at one point the strawberries had tried to take over and we told the other tenants they could help themselves to plants, so they were thinner this year.
Then we get to work in the compost and plant the various starts that Fay picked up Tuesday. Also a few seeds.
We've got 4 broccoli, 2 zucchini, 2 lemon cucumber, and two habanada peppers. Plus I'm going plant radishes in a grid (seed packet says they can go 2" apart) .
I also have some potting soil and plantable pots, so I'm going to try starting some of the ground cherry seeds indoors and then transplant the best ones later.
I've got to take some pictures soon.
Oh, that salad? I'm eating it now. Besides the various greens it has cucumbers slices, sliced mushrooms, chunks of green bell pepper, goat cheese crumbles sliced hard boiled eggs, and shredded cheddar cheese. With ranch dressing.
The greens were from the garden. The cheddar was from an "instant winner" ticket in the Albertson's monopoly game. The ranch dressing was a $1 off coupon from the same game. The hard boiled eggs were bought. All the other add-ins were courtesy of our local food pantry.
You can never be sure what they'll have in the way of meats, cheeses or produce, but being willing to try new stuff pays off.
The "raised bed" (read re-purposed watering trough) was a riot of greens. The tomatoes in the plot looked mostly ok, but the basil was still kinda wilty.
So I set the sprinkler on our plot and went to work on the tub (fay and I call it that for shorthand). Some web research had shown that the big brown patches on the chard were infestations of a sort of beetle larva that lives *inside* the leaves.
So I spent some time carefully trimming out the infested parts, and sometimes just cutting off whole leaves. The chard plants were greatly reduced, but should survive.
I also trimmed some of the adjacent spinach leaves that looked like they'd gotten hit. No need to worry about *those* plants surviving!
This had taken a while because it was awkward to work around the plants, and I had trouble with my back. I finally dragged up one of the plastic chairs and sat down to work on things.
After the cleanup was done, I started harvesting things. Got all the ripe strawberries from the tub. I snipped a selection of leaves for salad, a few carrot leaves (some of the half-dozen rainbow carrots in the tub had *huge* clusters of leaves, I figured they could spare one or two each.
The chard wasn't up to harvesting. I got several large spinach leaves. Then I got to the six "salad" plants. An assorted of several plants sold together at the nursery. Fay has a post on what they are. I just call them yummy.
Harvested leaves as well as some buds and blossoms (don't them them going to seed this early) and I had enough for a salad. Actually, now that I've made it, I should have gone a bit lighter).
I shifted the sprinkler to the tub, and harvested some dandelion (volunteer crop :-) from the plot and a few strawberries.
We need to finish preparing the plot soon. Especially now that we have the last of the starts.
Gotta deal with the grass, and transplant the strawberries that are in places we don't want them (the strawberries in the tub came from the plot, at one point the strawberries had tried to take over and we told the other tenants they could help themselves to plants, so they were thinner this year.
Then we get to work in the compost and plant the various starts that Fay picked up Tuesday. Also a few seeds.
We've got 4 broccoli, 2 zucchini, 2 lemon cucumber, and two habanada peppers. Plus I'm going plant radishes in a grid (seed packet says they can go 2" apart) .
I also have some potting soil and plantable pots, so I'm going to try starting some of the ground cherry seeds indoors and then transplant the best ones later.
I've got to take some pictures soon.
Oh, that salad? I'm eating it now. Besides the various greens it has cucumbers slices, sliced mushrooms, chunks of green bell pepper, goat cheese crumbles sliced hard boiled eggs, and shredded cheddar cheese. With ranch dressing.
The greens were from the garden. The cheddar was from an "instant winner" ticket in the Albertson's monopoly game. The ranch dressing was a $1 off coupon from the same game. The hard boiled eggs were bought. All the other add-ins were courtesy of our local food pantry.
You can never be sure what they'll have in the way of meats, cheeses or produce, but being willing to try new stuff pays off.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-08 04:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-08 07:24 am (UTC)Thenk kew, thenk kew verra much.
Not really that awesome. Hopefully I can get the plot properly prepared and get all the starts in and some radishes seeded.
Fay has ordered a ton of plantain (the herb, not the banana relative) and Italian dandelion seeds. We found this outfit that will sell you *thousands* of seeds for like $5. Including shipping.
We'll be using them up for years. But they grow easily and yield fairly well.
But my knees are gonna hate me even with the foam pads. I do *not* do well on my knees anymore and I'll have to take my cane to be able to get up. :-(