Garden Tour on March 31, 2010 - Part I

It has been a little more than a month since my last tour of the vegetable garden. I just went back to the tour that I posted on February 25 to compare and can see that there has been a lot of growth. The garlic has shot up higher and the Portuguese Dairyman's Kale is in full bloom.

The Sugar Magnolia Purple Snap Peas have come out from under their protective cover and grown a foot. Seedlings of Yellow Giant and Green Beauty snow peas have replaced the Kefe Beinwil snow peas and are under protective cover most of the time.

Some of the Purple snap peas have tendrils that end in leaves. This variety has these leafy tendrils, regular tendrils and hyper-tendrils.

On the other side of the peas are a couple of smooth leaf kale plants that have started to bolt. I snapped off the flower tops and have been cutting the leaves for the chickens. The low growing plants in the center are Purple Flowering Choy Sum. And there's one small Romanesco Broccoli in the front from last fall that hasn't produced a head . . .  yet.

In the next bed the favas are growing like crazy. There's some black aphids on a few of the plants but they haven't gotten out of control, a lot of the aphids have been parasitized by beneficial insects.

It's time to start harvesting fava beans! These are the Early Violet variety.

These are Azur Star kohlrabi which were not yet planted out at the time of the last tour. They are already forming small bulbs.

The Green butterhead lettuce is sizing up rapidly. I almost lost some of these to a gopher, the gap on the right is where one of the set of seedlings got attacked. Two little plants survived and I replanted them, that's the two small plants in the back. To the left are seedlings of Cimarron and Noga baby romaine plants. I've kept the remay over the lettuce plants to protect them from the sun, we had a few days of unusually warm weather not long ago.

On the other side of the main path the Monticello Poppies are starting to send up flower stalks. It will be interesting to see how much seed this patch produces. To the left of the poppies are beets and golden corn salad. The empty spot in front of the poppies is where I pulled out the Olive Leaf Rapini.

Can you see the beet root peeking out under all the foliage? Finally, a Burpee's Golden beet nearly ready to harvest! I've been trying for a year to get them to grow.

The Golden Corn Salad is about to burst into bloom. I love that color, it looked beautiful with some burgundy beet foliage that was there until not long ago.

Over here is the crowded planting of Even' Star American Rapa (on the right), Pancalieri a Costa Bianca Frisee, Mizuna, and some radishes that are supposed to be grown for their tasty leaves (can't remember the name). In the back on the right are the scraggly but still alive and trying to grow Padron peppers from last year. And in the rear on the left are the young Piracicaba and Romanesco Natalino broccolis that have outgrown their water bottle cloches.

From front to back: Mammoth Red Rock Cabbage, Romanesco Natalino, and Piracicaba broccoli.

One more view of the brassica bed.

The next bed over is where the Golden Chard is happily growing. Behind the chard are a few small Gigante kohlrabi, and behind that are the Red Florence Fennel and the bolting Hollow Pipe of Malines cutting celery. Some small scallions can be found on the right and some humongo overgrown scallions are taking up space on the left.

The potatoes seem to have shrunk from the last tour. Is it time to harvest or have the sow bugs just been munching excessively? Don't know. The parsley on the left is ready to be cleaned out. The whole bed has to be cleaned out soon, this bed is the future home of my tomatoes and a lot of peppers.

That's it for the vegetable garden. Next up will be some highlights of edibles growing elsewhere around the garden.