First Harvest: Radishes

We harvested half the radishes and ate them for dinner. It was fun to have all different colors. They were nice and spicy. I was surprised at the different sizes. We left some in the ground because they seemed quite small. I planted a second crop a few weeks ago and they're sprouted now. I think I'll pull up the rest of the radishes in this square and plant more lettuce.

Lettuce and Spinach

The lettuce in growing well. Take a look at the previous post and see how much they've grown in just three weeks. I can tell I disturbed the seeds by watering soon after they were planted, because the square is not evenly covered with lettuce plants. I'm looking forward to the day when I can take my scissors and fill the salad bowl.

The spinach is becoming recognizable. I think everything has slowed down some now that the days are getting shorter and the nights are cooler.

Growing Nicely

Can you see the onion sprouts? They're so tiny. They will become red and green scallions.

The mesclun is growing. I can start to see the different kinds of lettuce.

These are the sugar snap peas, the biggest plants in garden so far. They're supposed to grow to vines five feet tall, so I'm going to have come up with some kind of a support pretty soon. I may use an old tomato cage.

We're supposed to have heat wave of 100 degrees tomorrow. I just watered everything. I'll water again in the morning and drape the shade cloth over the cage before I go to work.

Territorial Seeds

I planted some more seeds. I couldn't find collards, turnips or kale here, so I ordered these seeds from Territorial Seeds in Cottage Grove OR (a blast from the past!).

The red Russian kale is my favorite kind of kale, so I'm looking forward to eating it. It's very tender and sweet. I've heard that collard plants get very tall and you can keep picking leaves from them. I hope that kale and collards will be my winter vegetable staples.

I planted these last weekend and the turnips and collards have already sprouted. I get just one collard plant in one square foot, so I hope it does well!

Thinning the Radishes

I thinned the radishes last weekend by pulling out the extra sprouts. I decided to save and eat the extras. I put them in a salad, but I couldn't taste them at all. Oh, well.

When I thinned the bok choi a few days later, I clipped the extras with scissors. That was faster!

Sprouts!

The radishes sprouted first, on Friday, in just 5 days. These are Easter Egg Radishes from Renee's Garden in Felton CA. They're supposed to be white, pink, red or purple. I bought a lot of seeds from Renee's Garden, thinking that because it's nearby, the plants should do well here. I can see why they say radishes are good to grow for kids. It's very satisfying to see them sprout so soon.

Now I have the hard job of thinning them. The author of Square Foot Gardening says to use scissors to cut off the seedlings you don't want. I may pull the radishes to put in a salad.

This is the mesclun--baby salad greens. I'm looking forward to a whole square foot full of little lettuce leaves of different kinds.

Squared and Planted

We put the grid across the top of the garden box to make it an official square foot garden. The squares look awfully small. It will be interesting to see how much food I actually get from it.

Planting peas. I just used my finger to poke holes in the soil. It feels like sticking my finger into a really dense, moist chocolate cake! (In fact, I've been craving cake ever since I planted.)

My dh built this cage to protect the garden, especially from the cat (who might think it's a giant dirt box just for him). I can also drape shade cloth over it if the weather gets hot again.

Detail of the garden cage. It's made of pvc pipe and mesh. The whole thing lifts easily off the garden box.