Cover the Tomatoes!

 

I finally get my tomatoes and peppers planted this ‘spring’; only to turn on the evening news and hear a freeze warning. You’ve got to be kidding me! We are nearly a month passed our average last freeze date! I guess it’s average for a reason. Maybe the summer will be milder with fewer bugs……one can only hope.

 

Cleaning up the Garden Harvest

I was out planting the spring garden today and had no plans on harvesting anything. However, I noticed that some of my turnip plants had started to bolt. So I decided to go ahead and harvest the rest of the turnip greens before I lost them as well. I grow turnips for the tops; not the bulbs.

I ended up with a pot full of turnip greens; which is about $5 worth. Not bad; but I definitely need to figure out how to grow more.



I then went over to the herb garden and noticed that several things could use a good haircut. The rosemary and sage could use a nice trimming.

I trimmed the rosemary, but left the sage alone because ….

…. its about to bloom! I can’t wait to see it.


The cilantro was in bad need of a haircut. It is in full flower, so I need to figure out if its any good after it has flowered. I gave it a good trimming anyway. Here it is before the trimming:


The chives and thyme aren’t too out of control; but I decided to trim them also.


Here’s what I ended up with:

rosemary


thyme; lemon thyme; chives


parsley


and the flowering cilantro.


I measure my herbs after they have been dried; which is occurring as I type this. I did leave some of the flowering cilantro in the herb garden to reseed itself and for coriander seed.

Remember our Chicks?

Remember these cutie pies


Fast forward several weeks and we now have


As my son says, ’Look mom! We have Hens.’ And we do…..almost.

Mystery Solved

Throughout the winter, I’ve had this huge plant growing in one of my beds. I thought it was broccoli, but it never formed a head.

I figured I had some contaminated seed. Instead of pulling it, I continued to let it grow. The bed is 4’ across and you can see that this one plant is covering about half of its width.

Then about two weeks ago, I came out and saw this


YAY! It’s a romanesco broccoli (or cauliflower).

I pulled it a few days later at about 2 lbs.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t look like a keeper. The plant grew too large, it took entirely too long to head, and it doesn’t look like it produces side shoots. Actually, I think that this cool, slow spring is the only reason I even got a head before it bolted. A normal spring and it probably would have never formed a head.