Several weeks have passed since the last garden update. It seems that we’ve been getting busier with weekend activities.
I took a few minutes on Tuesday to go out and get some pictures taken of the garden. This has been a fantastic year for lettuce. Usually by this time, the lettuce is bitter and bolting – which means it is no longer good to eat.
But since it has been steady with temperatures in the high 60’s or through the 70’s, the lettuce is growing abundantly and is still good. I’ve been taking salads to work and also having chicken salads for dinner. Healthy and when you load it up with everything, it tastes good!
Here is a ‘tour’ of the lettuce garden:
It had been a few years since I grew buttercrunch lettuce. Not too much of a fan of it. Compared to the other leaf lettuce varieties below, buttercrunch is not a good plant to take a few leaves and let it grow. In addition, one of the plants seemed to grow very rapidly and has already died.
New Red Fire Lettuce is one of my favorites – maybe more so than Simpson Elite. It has nice coloration to it and seems to be one of the last to get bitter and bolt.
Red Salad Bowl lettuce is also a leaf lettuce – but the leaves are definitely different than the other two. The other two varieties have large, fan-like leaves. Red Salad Bowl has leaves somewhat like a maple tree leaf. When I went to pick more lettuce yesterday evening, I noticed that the Red Salad Bowl lettuce appears to be getting bitter now and is starting to bolt underneath. So it doesn’t last as long.
Simpson Elite is a great variety. Fully green in color but it does resist bolting and getting bitter. At least until temperatures get really hot.
I harvested one of the Ventury Celery plants last week and cut it up. Put it in with the salads. I just used the last of the celery the other evening so I’ll need to harvest another. A total of eight were planted. When I arrived home from work last night, three of the celery plants were drooping over. It got to around 80 – 82 degrees yesterday and I probably failed to water the plants lately – so that is a bad combination for celery. So right as I arrived home from work, I gave the celery, lettuce, and onions a good watering.
The onions are growing up. Those toward the back (picture below) are definitely further along than those in the front (picture above). What a difference a month made with planting them inside earlier than usual.
The peas – remember in one of the last posts I mentioned that only a very small section of peas came up? Yep – and they are still growing. Not going to get many peas this year from this little spot. Amazing that all of them are right next to each other – not even one for the entire length of the garden bed.
Moving to the front yard – remember how I re-shaped the area by the road? Originally it was used for potatoes but I decided to no longer do potatoes. Wasn’t worth the time and effort for the cost that you can buy potatoes in the store. Sure, the organic potatoes you produce yourself might taste a bit better and you know where they come from, but having boards up against the curb of the road definitely stood out in the neighborhood too. Well heck – I stand out in the neighborhood with the grape arbor and garden in the front yard still. Anyways, the grass is all grown up and doing very well. This was also a great year for getting grass seed to start with the temperatures and rain that was fairly steady.
Green beans in the front garden are doing quite well. I did go through and re-plant in a few spots where seed didn’t come up, but otherwise we probably will see green beans in the next few weeks – just so long as the fencing stands up and keeps the deer out. So far, so good with the fencing though. Oh, and a few onions are right in the front in the overflow 🙂
Tomato plants – unfortunately it looks like I’ve lost two tomato plants. The two plants that were transplanted inside are the ones that didn’t make it. One is completely gone and the other is very stunted and doesn’t seem to be growing much.
That is all for this garden update!