Harvest Monday

lettuce & other greens in the greenhouse

Well, another Harvest Monday rolls around. This blog hop is sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions and is a great way to connect with gardeners all around the world.

Most of this week has been more of the same; more lettuce, chard, spinach, lambs quarters, chickweed, and sorrel in the salad, with two additions some days.

Claytonia and Mache

There is a little bit of Claytonia, aka, Miner's Lettuce, and some Mache, also known as Lamb's Lettuce. Miner's Lettuce is a crunchy succulent plant, basically an edible weed native to California. Lamb's Lettuce is a winter weed in grain fields in Europe. It has a soft filmy texture with an unusual sweet taste. Both volunteered in a bed where they were grown in 2009.

Dwarf Grey Sugar Peas with rat damage

The Dwarf Grey Sugar peas in the greenhouse are really coming on now. However, as you can see some dead branches in the picture. This is caused by rats chewing through the stems low down, killing the whole branch above. I have now trapped 11 rats in here since January 1. I think Ratatouille's whole family is living under my house!

Snapdragons and peas

Here are a couple of snapdragons in a hanging basket engulfed by the pea plants. I grew the snapdragons from seed last fall. I really like the darker pink/red/maroon ones and will take cuttings of those later one to make more of them.

Society Garlic blooms

The Society Garlic in the greenhouse is blooming again, a lovely mild addition to a salad.

Besides all of these things I pulled the last of the orange carrots and replanted the bed to lettuce and radishes and harvested some cooking greens.

It's been quite warm, in the high 70's here and I"ve had to keep the greenhouse open as much as I could so it wouldn't overheat. Then today I woke up to heavy rain, which turned to snow and then into pea sized hail! What crazy weather; we're expecting freezing lows the next 2-3 nights so I've brought all the tomato and tender herb plants into the house from the greenhouse to keep them safe.

Front sidewalk in the hail storm

In less than five minutes the ground was white. I'm hoping it didn't do too much damage to things outdoors.