Harvest July 18

In this warm spell we've been having, I have been concerned about the health of my garden.  It's hard to get over there to water everyday and Mother Nature has not been generous with the rains.  So I was a bit surprised when I went there to water today and found cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, shallots and lettuce that were ready to pick.
We discovered that Swiss Chard is not to our liking and though it makes the garden look pretty, we weren't much interested in eating it, so I dug them all up and composted them.  Live and learn.
Looks like we have some nice peppers, watermelon and more cucumbers, shallots and tomatoes on the way!  I planted more lettuce, if all goes well we should have a new crop by late September or early October.

The Harvest Continues

The Garden, June 26, 2012

The Harvest Continues:  More radishes and some Lettuce!

And looks like we'll have some tomatoes soon!

June 26, 2012 -- The weatherman is predicting a heatwave, so I went to the garden early in the morning, did some light weeding, watered everything well and harvested some more radishes and a NEW CROP --  GREEN LEAF LETTUCE!  We have the beginnings of a darn good salad, but we'll have to buy a few other things at the Farmers' Market.  But HEY!   It's all organic!

First Harvest!

The Garden June 21, 2012!

The First Harvest!  I grew food!

June 21 -- I harvested 6 radishes.  Pretty impressive since they were grown from seeds planted 40 days ago!  But I am now a grower!  Mostly I relied on the soil and the rain --  that's my secret.

Transplants -- only way to rock.

I guess I learned my lesson about seeds!  We don't really have a way of starting seeds in our townhouse so we began our garden with seeds in mid-May.  I feel like a chump.  Got smart and bought some pepper and tomato seedlings in early June and NOW we got a garden.  The seeds are just starting to take off but the transplants are rockin' and rollin'  What a difference.  It's been really windy and lost most of my mulch, so the next major workday will be WEEDING and MULCHING.  We should have ready to eat garden fresh salads in no time.

Seedlings are breaking through!

Just breaking through and ready to be thinned.

We finished seeding on May 10, just the cold weather stuff:  carrots, cucumbers, lettuce and radishes.  The seed packets predict 7-10 days to germinate and they were pretty close.

Our Garden as of MAY 21!

The soil was a little damper than one would want, but the moisture was helpful in getting the seeds started and that organic cow manure really fed them!  AND the weeds.  So the next step is to thin the rows to give the lucky plants room to grow and keep the weeds at bay.

Our Garden Begins

I have always wanted to have a garden.  This summer, we finally have one.  After too many years in an apartment we are now in a classy townhouse and just a few blocks from the Community Garden.  So we got a plot and decided to grow a salad garden.  I've done a LOT of reading and still know nothing.

     The one thing I KNOW is that you have to prep the seed bed and you can't plant many things until the night time temps are 50 or better.  To celebrate MAY DAY, we took the comfy temps as a sign that it was time to prep the seed bed.  My car was filled with 160 pounds of pure manure (not the first time!)

The Seed bed,  Watch our 9X15 foot garden grow!

We spread it, worked it in and hauled away the weeds that had already taken hold.
     This summer I will blog our first bumbling forays into the miraculous process of growing living things to kill and eat!