Earliest Zucchini Ever!

I may have grown the earliest zucchini ever this year! I noticed a couple days ago that one of my Costata Romanesco plants was already producing female flowers. Several of the fruits are already fairly large and would be completely acceptable as baby zukes. Most years, I'm just now getting my squashes planted, so I can't believe I already have fruit. It must be the black plastic that's helping heat the soil.

I still haven't staked any of my tomatoes (I'm not sure what I'm waiting for), but I did finally built a little trellis for my mexican sour gherkins. It looks really cute, but I'm hoping I don't poke my eye out on it at some point.

My beans and soybeans are up and growing already. Every year I'm astonished by how fast beans germinate. You'd think I would get used to it after a while.

My corn is up a running too. This is the first time I've ever grown corn, so hopefully it will be successful. I planted two different types of sweet corn and two types of popcorn. I saw a baby rabbit investigating this corner of the garden the other day, so I might have to put up more rabbit fencing.

My salad greens and brassicas are getting out of control! We've finally had spring-like weather the last couple weeks, so the leafy greens are pretty happy. We've been eating salad with nearly every meal, and I haven't even made a dent into our supplies.

This was the first year I intentionally grew mesclun. I usually just pick different greens and mix them together, but I thought I'd try some pre-mixed mesclun this time around. 

Salad Garden

I'm trying to put a little more effort into the salad greens portion of my garden this year. In past years, I have had so many volunteer lettuce seedlings pop up around the garden that I never had to intentionally plant any. However, after overhauling the garden this year, I wanted to start with a clean slate, which means no volunteers.

I'm trying several new salad crop varieties this year including 'Tom Thumb' shown in the foreground below. Tom thumb is a miniature butterhead lettuce. The idea is that you can harvest the entire head and it's enough for a single salad. Head lettuces can be difficult to grow in my area because spring is almost nonexistent (and this year was no exception).  They need cool weather in order to "head up" and our temps tend to jump straight from freezing to boiling. Even if these little guys don't make it to the table, they're adorable in they're own right.

I'm also trying frisee for the first time this year. This is a variety of endive that will grow into really wispy leaves, great for adding texture and bulk to salad mixes. My seedlings haven't started to take on the wispy growth yet, but they're still pretty young.

Another new variety, and possibly my most favorite new variety, is 'Ruby Streaks' mustard. It's peppery, texturey (is that a word?), and gorgeous!

I've devoted almost two whole (approximately 22' long) rows to what I'm calling salad crops this year including kales, endives, swiss chards, carrots, and lettuces. I attempted to plant them in alternating bands of green and red/purple-leaved varieties, so once they bulk up a bit, I think it will be really pretty.

Here's a better look at the drip tape I installed. There are little holes every 12 inches that drip water at a fairly fast pace. I only installed two rows of tape per 36" wide bed. So far it seems to be adequate.

I also plan on fencing in the salad garden this year. Last year the rabbits and squirrels got a little out of hand. While the fence won't keep the squirrels out, at least the rabbits won't be able to make a buffet out of my kale (below) and the rest of my salad garden.

Getting back to it!

It has been a LONG time since I last posted. Life has been busy (and difficult). I've worked at 5 different jobs since last fall...trying to find that long term career has been more difficult than I ever imagined. I spent the spring semester teaching introductory biology at a community college, which was a blast. However, once May rolled around, I found myself unemployed yet again. That said, the last week and a half since the semester ended has been fantastic! 

I got my lettuce and other salad greens planted.

I grew my first ever pullable lettuce plug. For someone with an horticultural background, this is a BIG DEAL!

I've been able to spend all day, every day, in my garden. I've transformed my raised bed garden into a (hopefully) more productive linear bed layout with a drip tape irrigation system. I bought an irrigation kit from www.dripirrigation.com and added a few extra components to customize it to the size of my garden.

The drip-tape system was incredibly easy to install, I didn't even need the instructions once I got the filter and backflow preventer hooked up to my spigot. After last year's drought-like conditions, this is going to be a huge timesaver (and plantsaver). All I have to do is turn on the spigot for about 45 minutes each morning and walk away. The hardest part is remembering to turn the water off again!

My chickens have been enjoying some valuable mommy-and-me time. I've been letting them out into the yard all day every day (except for the day when a giant husky tried to eat them). They are still enclosed in a makeshift fence, so they aren't completely free-ranging (which is illegal in my city, by the way). 

I haven't been able to harvest much from the garden yet. However, the perennial herbs and rhubarb have already been quite productive. I made a rhubarb syrup using 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, and 4 cups chopped rhubarb. I simmered it for about 20 minutes and strained the syrup from the pulp. I imagine the pulp would make great fruit leather, but I didn't want to haul out my giant dehydrator just for one sheet. So far I've used the syrup to make rhubarb soda, which is pretty tasty.

My front tulips, daffodils, and other bulbs were really pretty this spring despite the harsh drought conditions of 2012. After the tough summer last year, I was pretty sure that my bulbs wouldn't do much this spring, but I was wrong. My grape hyacinths were particularly nice this year. I brought these bulbs from my parents house to my new digs four years ago. They have multiplied quite a bit!

First Homegrown Salad of the Season

A mixture of baby lettuces, arugula, pak choi, kale, and mizuna. Yum!

Colorful Lettuce

My lettuce bed is looking very lush and colorful. However, the hot weather is making the leaves start to turn bitter. Hopefully I'll get to enjoy salads for a while longer.

First Farmer's Market Results

I meant to mention something sooner about my first farmer's market of the season last Saturday, but I've been quite busy (my comprehensive exams start in 13 days). The market was very hot and muggy. I'm not sure if that was the cause of the lack of customers, but market traffic seemed very sparse. 

Here are some photos to recap the day:

Multi-directional onion...not sure what's going on here. I took four bunches of green onions and came home with four bunches of green onions. At least my parents were happy when they received a giant bag of green onions the next day.

Salad mix with lettuce, arugula and mizuna. I sold all three bags I took. 

I was surprised that I was the only vendor selling salad mix so far. I guess I must have gotten my lettuce planted earlier than everyone else.

Bouquet of cilantro. I sold most of the bunches of cilantro too.

Here are all the crates of perennials and vegetable seedlings waiting to be loaded into the car. I was disappointed by how few of them I sold, yet I still made slightly more than my average market day last year. I'm planning on donating everything that's left after this coming Saturday's market to a local community garden 

Salad Garden Taking Shape

I'm starting to actually see some defined rows in my bed of salad greens. Germination looks like it was a little patchy, but I think the survivors will fill out nicely.

Top to bottom (not that you can distinguish the rows from this far away): Green Heart daikon radish, radish mix, mizuna, arugula, lettuce, weeds, lettuce, more lettuce.

Arugula always grows great for me. It germinates fast and is of harvestable size in no time. 

I'm not sure why all the lettuce in this row decided to germinate in one spot.

Show Yourselves!

My lettuce, arugula, radish, and mizuna seeds have finally poked out of the soil. I think the delay must have been due to a combination of unusually cool temps and crusted-over soil.

Luckily these volunteer cilantro seedlings had no trouble germinating.

These lettuce seedlings, on the other hand, were very slow to get going. If you can believe it, I planted these almost a month ago! It took almost two weeks before I saw any sign of germination.

This self-sown arugula will also help add to my early spring salads (assuming it isn't technically summer by the time these things grow big enough)