Outside

More Garden Spinach

Yes, I know, this looks very much like my spinach post from earlier this month, but I'm just so very excited about being able to grow - and harvest - spinach this year!

This time I've pulled some Plum Purple Radishes, which are quite pretty. We'll have salad the next two nights. Tonight I'll serve it with radishes, goat cheese crumbles and maybe some cashews. Tomorrow I'll top it with some beautiful strawberry slices, maybe some avocado, chive flowers and a raspberry vinaigrette.

What a great time of year.

Tomatoes Planted

I planted all the tomatoes today. Thanks to my friend Pete for starting all the seeds for me this year - without him I'd be at the mercy of the selection at the nursery.

5 each - Pruden's Purple (main crop slicers)
4 each - Gregori's Alti (main crop all-purpose)
3 each - Principe Borghese (small salad and/or drying)
2 each - Sungold (orange cherry-size)
2 each - Yellow Pear (yellow cherry-size)

First Harvest 2009 - Spinach and Radishes

Here it is, the first harvest from the garden in 2009 - Bloomsbury spinach and Cherry Belle radishes. I think I'll serve a simple spinach salad - radishes, chives, raspberry vinaigrette dressing. Mmmmm.

Greens Looking Good!

The greens bed is looking particularly good this year.

On the right on the top and bottom are radishes. Also on the right are two lettuces - Black Seeded Simpson and Merlot. Both are cut-and-come-again varieties, so I can snip what I need and more will grow from the root. They should last until about the 4th of July, depending on how hot it gets.

What I'm most excited about, though, is the spinach, in two rows on the left. I've planted spinach for the past five years or so, and this will be the first year I'll harvest anything significant before it bolts.

Why is the spinach doing so well this year? I wish I could say it's because of something I've done, but I doubt it. The only thing I did differently this year was plant the seed thickly in the rows. All my books say to plant spinach 2" apart, but this year I had old seed and was running out of time, so I made two 1/2" furrows and put in lots of seed.

I think, though, the main reason the spinach is doing well this year is because it's been a cool spring. Here in Minnesota, we can go from frozen ground to temperatures in the 80's in about a month - not the best growing weather for spinach. This year, though, the temperatures have stayed moderate, in the 60's and 70's, so the spinach is able to grow slowly.

The first salad should be this weekend. I'm looking forward to it!

Bush Beans - Half bed planted

I planted a half bed of bush beans today - Blue Lake 274. This year I'm going to see how many green beans I can freeze for the upcoming winter. The taste of "fresh" grocery store beans is so woody and bleh - I'm hoping I can stock enough for garden beans once per week during the winter. We'll see.

Potatoes Planted

I got the potatoes planted today. I did two garbage cans of Norland Red. This definitely wasn't my first choice of varieties (I like the fingerlings), but I didn't order at the right time so had to make do with what was at the garden center. Oh well, just about any home-grown potato is better than store-bought, so I'll be in for a treat later this summer.

What's Blooming Now - April 24, 2009

The first flush of green is spreading across Minnesota. Here in my neighborhood, a few things have started blooming.

The only flowers I have in my yard right now are daffodils.

Magnolias just started blooming yesterday, while the forsynthias have been in full-flower for about 4-5 days. On the left is a neighbor's full-size tree as seen through the woods. The same neighbor has a forsynthia in their front yard as seen on the right.

Yet another neighbor has a pretty rock wall with species tulips and little Siberian squill flowers.

First Spring Planting, 2009

Planted today:

Sugar Snap Peas
Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce
Merlot Lettuce
Bloomsbury Spinach

First Harvest

I harvested the first vegetables of the season on
Wednesday (6/18). I made a salad with the baby lettuce greens, snap peas and chives. I used the tarragon to make a sauce for pan grilled chicken breast. It was a wonderful dinner.

I'm wondering, though, why the lettuce is growing so slowly this year? I planted in early spring, and until this week we've had cooler than average weather - low 70's, mostly. I thought we'd be swimming in lettuce, but instead I just thinned it for the first time this week. Hmmmm, strange.

Local Garlic at the Grocery Store?

On Saturday, I bought two heads of hardneck garlic at the grocery store. So what, you say?

Well, since I've been shopping Lunds - a Twin Cities chain of grocery stores - for more than 15 years, I believe I have only ever bought one variety of garlic. You know, softneck grocery store garlic (either California Early or California Late - the two most popular commercial varieties). And since softneck garlic can only be grown successfully in much warmer climes than Minnesota (mostly California), there's no way that softneck garlic is local.

But on Saturday the big garlic bins at Lunds held these nice, purple, somewhat-smaller-than-usual hardneck bulbs. There was no mention of them being a different type, the price was the same as it's always been, but these were definitely hardneck garlic bulbs. (FYI - the thick, hard stalk in the middle of the head was the dead giveaway. Softneck garlic is all cloves, hardneck still has the stalk in the middle.)

So were they local? I don't really know for sure, but Lunds has really been pushing (and marketing) their local and organic products for the past few years, so I wouldn't be shocked if this garlic was from somewhere in the Midwest. And I think that's kind of cool - the idea that "buying local" was so not-a-big-deal that they just do it when the produce is in season and don't even make a fuss about it.