Sunday, May 5, 2013

First Spring Harvest




Our first harvest of the springtime has arrived!! We were hoping to get some lettuces and greens earlier in the  colder months of spring, but it just did not work out that way. We will try again next winter :)

But right now, we are enjoying some beautiful red and white radishes harvested from the garden, along with some spring onions, lettuce, and baby spinach!

red and white radishes, spring onions


we have been harvesting the lettuce as we need it


Our sweet friends that live not far from us brought us fresh asparagus harvested from their garden--isn't is beautiful?


Pretty soon we will have kale available for cooking with collards following not too long afterwards! Our garlic is doing really well and should be ready perhaps in the next month. Fresh herbs have re-grown on their own, and we have TONS of lavender.

garlic


chives (they grow back every year on their own)

one of the lavender plants

So incredibly excited, I feel like our garden is finally at the productivity level we've always hoped for. After a couple years of only so-so harvests and a lot of total flops, we have learned how to make our garden healthier and give it what it needs most.

onions

This includes lots of extra compost, little natural fertilizer and extra sunlight. The sunlight may have to be achieved by cutting down one of our trees. Although I really hate to do this, our yard is heavily wooded and there aren't many other places we could put it to receive that needed sunlight.

Another thing we have invested a lot of time in is starting our seeds indoors, moving them to bigger pots and hardening them off before transplanting outside. We use a simple home-made grow light that I showcased in this post as well as our cold frame for giving new seedlings the warmth and light they need.

My hope is to be harvesting something every week or two from our garden! How does your garden grow this spring?

Happy Harvesting,







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