My daughter and I have been eating lettuce straight off the plants. Everything is looking pretty good, including the weeds. Asparagus and rhubarb are producing nicely. Potatoes are growing gangbusters.
My main problem is the damn varmints. They eat the bean seeds or wait until there are leaves, and then eat those. Try try again.
My bok choy got about a handspan high and now it’s bolting. What—?
Oh, well, gardening is an adventure…
Well, the tomato and pepper transplants didn’t make it, nor did the melons or most of the Armenian cucumbers. I bought another batch of tomato and pepper and basil seeds, and tried to direct-sow those, along with snow peas, various microgreens, another round of mixed Mediterranean melons, the 3 different kinds of carrots, Chioggia beets, and some amaranth, more basil seeds, a couple different kinds of broccoli, and I think I’m forgetting something else.
So far the radishes are going gangbusters, and the carrots are just starting to poke up, along with the beets. The huge bushes of thyme and chives from last year have gone completely insane, and the sage is coming along nicely too.
Meanwhile I had started some more thyme and basil and mint seeds and some annual flowers from seeds in my kitchen window (coleus and pansies and impatiens). They mostly aren’t doing much of anything either, although I think the mint I planted in a not very sunny spot on the side of the building last year is coming back a bit. I may just throw in the towel and buy some annuals for the front yard, and a basil plant or two, and give up on starting them from seed - sure, seed is cheaper than plants, but that’s not so useful if nothing sprouts!
I have high hopes for the microgreens. If the direct-sowed tomatoes don’t do anything, I will probably just buy a few seedlings of those as well, but not 3 rows’ worth. What could I put in their place that’s foolproof? And what can I plant in the spot that will be vacated by the radishes in a couple of weeks? Sure, more radishes, but how many radishes can a person eat? Any suggestions for things I can plant in July once the carrots and beets are done? More carrots and beets, sure, but what else is good for a fall crop?
Yay! The microgreens that I just planted this weekend are already sprouting!
[Expletive deleted!] - something took out my entire lettuce patch!
Please accept my condolences on the loss of your “lett-tle” ones.
We’ve been eating our lettuce for 3 weeks now. The biggest eggplant is about a foot long, looking forward to cooking and tasting home-grown ones. The Brussel sprouts are actually starting to look like plants (apparently they’re slow-growing). Tomatoes are doing well, bell peppers are finally taking off, quite a few cuke flowers and squash blossoms. In all, my return to gardening after several decades is going very well.
Yeah, well, it really chaps my ass because 1) my hours at work have been cut, so less money and 2) they just chopped my food stamp benefit by 1/3, so less money.
My garden isn’t just for fun, it really does make up a significant portion of our diet. When it’s not being eaten by something else (got a better look at it in the daylight, definitely something bit it off).
Sorry if the above came off a little snarky - I do appreciate your sympathy, it’s that with everything else I’ve been dealing with this felt a bit like a camel-breaking straw this morning.
My empathy was (and is) actual, despite my lame attempt to work a pun into the wording of it.
While I was typing my second paragraph, I remember thinking “Yanno, Broomstick’s garden is like the ones we had on our farm when I was a child, a necessary part of our diet at the time.”
I sympathize with you about all those things going on in your life that made this be the camel’s-back-breaking straw. I hope things get better for you.
My efforts to cover my front lawn with mint and herbs is not going gangbusters. Mint likes a little shade and my front lawn gets blasted with full sun until way past noon. The plants labeled ‘spearmint’-- a creeper-- just shriveled up and died. Don’t know if it was the sun or snails. The peppermints are still going strong. To replace the gone spearmints plants I got two Chocolate mints and a Greek Oregano.
I will fill my front lawn with something other than stupid dead grass and clover.
Also added a banana pepper to the two tomato plants. I think I can handle that. Will soon be putting the two year old blueberry bush in the ground. It has been in a pot this whole time and i think it may deserve a spot in the ground.
Am having a hard time not chopping down my herbs to put on the food I grill. The rosemary and Italian oregano can take it, but the sage and sweet basil is having a hard time keeping up.
Thinking of putting in rhubarb crowns in the fall. Hubby went to buy some and found that it was more than seven dollars a pound! I believe rhubarb gets harvested once every two years, so it’s one of those plants you have to think ahead on.
Roses, marigolds and lilies are blooming. Spring is truly here.
For those of you who have actually grown veggies before, how long can I leave root veggies like radishes and carrots and beets in the ground once they are ready to pick? There are only two of us, and there are only so many radishes we can eat at once (and Tom Scud is under doctor’s orders NOT to eat beets)? I imagine I don’t need to pick them all at one fell swoop, but how long can I stretch it out? Will they suffer (get woody or whatever) if I leave them in the ground too long?
Do any of you have any favorite sources for garlic? I’d like to try it, but the place where I bought the other seeds is all out of garlic.
So this is what I ended up with to replace the radishes once we harvest them, fill in where most of the Armenian cucumbers didn’t make it, and eventually to replace the spots where the carrots will be once I harvest them (and to fill in wherever other stuff I planted doesn’t germinate). And yes, we do eat a LOT of cruciferous veggies:
BLACK BEAUTY EGGPLANT (83 days) (HEIRLOOM) - I figure I can plant this among the cucumbers and/or melons and trellis them together.
RED RUSSIAN KALE (58 days heirloom)
DINOSAUR KALE (Nero di Toscana) (HEIRLOOM)
PINETREE CABBAGE MIX
CAULIFLOWER MIX (53-80 days)
Romanesco Cauliflower (85 Days)
DI RAPA NOVANTINA BROCCOLI (30 days)
BEIT ALPHA CUCUMBER (F1 hybrid 52 days)
EARLY PURPLE SPROUTING BROCCOLI (35 days)
Radishes will DEFINITELY get woody if you leave them in too long. When the stems start to thicken and get really stiff they’re over ripe. If the radishes are ready pull 'em out and put 'em in the fridge to keep, leaving them in the ground will not keep them edible.
Carrots will get woody, too, but not nearly as fast. I find white carrots are more prone to this than other colors (I do a lot of multi-color, multi-variety things).
I find beets don’t get significantly woody until you over-winter them. The younger the more tender, but still quite edible even if you leave them in the ground an extra week or two or even more.
Well, I went outside to take a peek at the radishes, and the leaves are coming along splendidly, but not much going on with the roots yet. I thinned them out a bit, and we ate the greens for lunch, stir-fried with eggs, caramelized onions, and some leftover bits of cheese. Delicious!
And to think how many radish and beet greens I have wasted previously in my life, thinking they weren’t good for anything. Ah well, I suppose they are much tastier 15 minutes after picking, rather than Lord knows how long after being trucked halfway across the country and going through the distribution chain.
The other thing about store-bought greens is that they always seem to be the larger, older ones which are usually more tough and bitter. The best greens are small, new, and tender.
I laugh when I see dandelion greens for sale at work - they’re huge, clearly grown for size and nothing else. Dandelion greens should be harvested before the plants flower, which means small leaves.
Cut off the greens and place the radishes in a ziploc bag in the fridge with a piece of paper towel to catch pooled condensation. They’ll last two weeks. Any quantity leftover at that point can be pickled in a sterile jar (run jar and lid through dishwasher or boil 10 minutes). You don’t have to use proper canning jars or process them to make them shelf stable; just sanitize the jars and put them in the fridge. It will keep in the fridge a month or more.
Carrots treated the same way will last a month in the fridge. And also make nice pickles.
I rooted spearmint that I bought at the store! It has new shoots and everything! The Peppermint is growing well in a pot. Dill is growing too. My baby lime tree flowered amazingly and is dropping its fruit as expected but it may yet hold one or two. Calamondin orange and fig are doing nothing those jerks.
I’m going to try and grow fall carrots in a container. I got “short n sweet” seeds!
Biggirl, you can harvest rhubarb every year once it gets going, but you need to leave it for two years to get established. Also be careful planting out a blueberry unless you’re sure the soil’s acid enough; mine were growing happily until I planted them out, then just gradually dwindled until there’s about 5 leaves left.
It’s just finally getting warm enough to plant out tender plants this side of the pond; my first squash and what we call French and runner beans are now out, and just about growing. I’m already picking the broad (fava, I know that one) beans and the first of the strawberries though.
I’m trying slug nematodes this year, because the horrid things usually scoff all my seedlings as soon as we get a wet night. I’m quite impressed by the difference it seems to have made, I still have snails, and they do some damage, but I’m hardly finding a slug, and even the brassica seedlings are coming up whole, despite the rain.
(The bolding is mine.)
I remember hearing about this many years ago, my family found it hilarious, but there was a company that sold lion and tiger feces as deer repellent. They called it “Zoo Doo,” which was part of the hilarity! 
I haven’t tried it, but I remember hearing that the deer don’t need to have any experience with big cats to recognize predator crap! (Upon further thought, I don’t know if they smell predator, or if they recognize the smell of digested prey. Eeew.)
Anyway, out of curiosity, I googled “Zoo Doo” and learned that zoos also sell elephant poo for use as fertilizer. So I googled “Zoo Doo deer repellent” with better results. The sites I found offered shipping, but maybe you could also inquire at the zoo closest to you, if this was something you’re of a mind to try.
Just a thought.
My question - I gave some tomato starts to a couple of the people I work with, and one of them told me that the birds had stolen all 5 of them! Plucked them all out of the ground within 3 days of her planting them. I’ve never heard of this - any one else? Birds steal tomato starts?
My first experiment with actual patio tomatoes - planted on my enclosed patio - is coming along nicely. I’ve got three plants in a huge pot with a central stake. Two of them are now about 18" high, and ready to be tied up. So far I’ve been pinching off the blossoms (along with the suckers), but I think it’s time to start pollinating them for the first time. I’ll use a small watercolor brush.
Let the squirrels and rabbits eat their hearts out; they’re not getting these beauties like the outdoor ones they destroyed in previous years. Of course there’s no guarantee my cats won’t get them instead.
Yeah, I have a problem with magpies (European species) pulling out any newly planted plants. It doesn’t matter what they are, and they rarely actually eat anything of them, just pull them out and leave them to dry out and die. They’re just curious (and bleedin’ annoying) birds.
I’ve found I can reduce it a bit by surrounding the newly planted stuff with grass clippings and bits of weeds; they seem to go investigate, throw the grass about a bit, decide it’s nothing interesting and leave the actual plant alone. Mostly.
My community garden plot is looking just OK. There are flowers and even fruit on the cherry tomatoes, but they’re only 30cm (1ft) tall - should I prune them off? Hmm.
The cukes are also not growing much, probably only 20cm, and have small leaves. They also have their first flowers. They keep falling off the trellis/cage, I’m wondering if I should be tying them up.
There’s a fruit on one of my wax peppers, as well as more flowers, but, again, the plants are tiny.
The cantaloupe has a flower too, and has grown a little bit. The watermelon was looking a bit withery before I watered yesterday.
I hope I’m watering enough. Bugger this drought, Clancy.