HARVEST MONDAY

lettuce, chard, sorrel, spinach, radish, chives, violas

Another Harvest Monday rolls around! I love visiting Daphne's Dandelions and hooking up with gardeners around the world!

 Well the lettuce harvest is lightening up again as some patches are turning bitter and preparing to bolt, while the newer patches are not quite up to speed yet. I need to figure out how to get a steadier supply going and not wait so long between plantings, especially now that the weather is warming up I don't expect a planting will give me as many cuts as when it was cooler. And soon it will be too hot and the seeds won't even sprout.

Mammoth Melting  on the left, Dwarf Grey Sugar, right

The peas in the greenhouse are falling all over the place and loaded with seed. I'm going to start drying them off. The Mammoth Melting Sugar peas planted out in the garden are starting to come on now. You can see how much bigger their pods are compared to the Dwarf Grey. I will probably keep growing the Dwarf Grey though, just because they are really pretty.

Of course I got eggs this week, all the girls are laying so I get 2-4 eggs a day.

Greens

I'm eating two or more dinners of greens a week now too. Red Mustard, chard, spinach and lambs quarters, usually mixed together and cooked up with bacon and onions. I have ripped out the last of the spinach and the lambs quarters in much of the yard are beginning to get tough and stringy, but so far the mustard and chard are holding out.

I finally found my calculator and tallied up March's harvests; 25.56 pounds of produce worth over $60. I don't have an exact $ amount yet as there are a couple of prices I need to check on first. I finally got my taxes finished so now I can maybe finish cleaning off my desk and finding my garden receipts so I can catch up my expense page.

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.