Saturday, April 17, 2010

Summer Garden Week 2

We had our first harvest of the season this week... some of my mesclun lettuce leaves were ready to pick :-) Don't they look pretty? I picked some twice this week and made myself a salad both times .


The second time I also cut a few chives from the garden, and I made a balsamic vinaigrette (from the South Beach book) that called for fresh thyme and basil leaves... which I also got from my herb garden. It's fun when you can start making meals with what you've grown out in your own back yard.


So, here we are with week 2 of our Summer Garden update. I want to try and take pictures of the same things each week, at the same angle so we can see how things are progressing. I hope that doesn't make things too boring for you all. For me it will hopefully show that plants are indeed growing when half the time I think they look no different. Of course over time as we plant new things I will add new pictures too (for instance, the lettuce won't grow when it gets too hot so I will be planting something else in it's place hopefully).

Here is the tomato and pepper bed again, with the mesclun in the background. You can compare with last week's picture if you scroll down to my week 1 post.

and here's a close up of the mesclun... this was after I'd cut some leaves off twice for salad!

broccoli is definitely getting bigger.

Peas are starting to get little flowers on them... the beans don't look much different to me!

I will try to take a picture each week from two corners of the 'garden'. This is from the left corner (pic above)

and this is from the right hand corner. I'm working on making the paths nice, but it's a costly thing!

WHAT'S NEW: Grapes are starting to grow again - we've never really had any to eat off these vines, we only bought them last year, and while they had grapes on them, they didn't really mature to anything we could eat. . . .


We have 4 grape vines... I'll share more about them next week.

We also have pumpkins ready to plant out. We're working on getting another bed cleared out for them.

Sunflowers

We had one big sunflower last year and it appears to have seeded itself in these two beds. I hope to gather together the 'garden' posts I made last year on my daily blog and will make a link here so you can see how big the sunflower got!

The weather is perfect right now for getting out in the garden, warm but not hot. Soon we'll be having to go out there early in the morning or late at night as the sun is going down, but for now, on a warm and balmy April evening. . . . . this is where you'll find us :-)


7 comments:

Judy said...

Denise - it would be 'so' nice to have a garden! I envy you. Yep - your lettuce has grown! In ONE week??? I remember my Mom used to go out to our garden & pick (harvest?) what she wanted, & then use it with our meal that night. The taste was heavenly! It makes you feel so much better & healthier, just knowing that 'you' raised it. I can't believe you have grapes too! You are turning into quite the farmer. :-) I just had a cute thought - I'm sure you know the children's nursery rhyme 'The Farmer in the Dell' - well, you are the 'The Farmer in the Den" :-) Have a lovely day Denise - sounds like you had a perfect one today. Hugs

Denise said...

LOL Judy, yes I know that rhyme, that is why my url is thefarmingden.blogspot - you may not have noticed it because I don't have it in my title now but just like I have the Daily Den and the Knitting Den, this is The Farming Den;-) (it's a play on den a place you sit and my name shortened to Den)!

Judy said...

Denise, yes I did notice that this was called the farming den. So cute! You are creative, even with your website names. :-) Have a lovely day Denise. Hugs!

Kristens Creations said...

Hi Denise, I'm glad you told me about your garden blog! It looks like you have some great veggies growing. I thought about putting a grape vine somewhere, yours is looking great. I'm really getting into this garden thing! I want to plant everything! lol...but I don't think our bed will hold it all. Glad you stopped by! Kristen

Bethany said...

It looks like you have a great yard for a garden, lots of sun! I'm a little envious of all you southerners getting to garden so early! I'll be checking back to see how it's growing :)

Candi said...

Your meslun mix looks so great! I'm not sure what I did to mine, but one is doing great and the other is sort of wonky (if that's a word :)

Jenna @ Newlyweds said...

What a beautiful salad!! Isn't that a great feeling picking straight from your garden to eat. I love that. Everything looks to be growing great. Keep up the good work.