The lettuce has done very well this season. The copper collars did a great job keeping the slugs off for the most part. It is getting pretty hot weather-wise, but luckily the plants all headed up before then. These are the last two heads ready for picking. The peas are mostly done too. Time to move into the summer crops. I picked 2 cucumbers today and the beans are coming along quickly. I like the harvest changes as the garden makes its way through the season.

It has been a long time since I’ve posted anything here. Not because there isn’t anything happening in the garden- just to opposite. Quite a bit is happening. And all is just on the verge of hitting full production. We’ve already had a steady stream of lettuce, 2 cabbages so far (I am making some sauerkraut) , boatloads of peas, Kale, Swiss Chard, some carronts, many strawberries, and plenty of herbs. I picked the first garlic today. It looks like some zucchini will be ready later this week.

The lettuce transplants are growing well. They have a ways to go before harvest. But the spring planting of greens has already been supplying our dinner salad needs. These are some red Iceburg lettuce that did very well for us last year, and so far are growing well this year too. Hopefully my new copper collars will keep the slugs out of them — nothing spoils a nice garden salad like a couple of unwelcome dinner guests!

It was so nice today to finally have some sunny, warm weather. It is starting to feel more like spring. I’ve been hardening off the lettuce plants this week and planted them today. Last year this red leaf lettuce did very well — it grew great, was tender and sweet. The only real problem was the number of slugs who seemed to enjoy it as much as we did. It was a pain to pick them off, and there was always the fear that one would sneak through and provide an unwelcome tasty morsel in the salad! This year I’m going to try using copper collars to keep the buggers off.

In The Garden – Growing Your Own Horseradish – NYTimes.com

OUR horseradish roots looked so innocent when they arrived in the mail last spring. Just little brown sticks, about eight inches long and as narrow as pencils.

Last year New York area residents bought about 24,000 tons of broccoli — almost all of it from the West Coast, 2,700 miles away…Yet this trip wasn’t necessary.  Broccoli prefers cool weather…it could have been grown successfuly from virtually anywhere else in the continental U.S., including New York’s own backyard gardens.

Sound like the latest rallying cry for the locavore/eat local movement? Guess again.  This was written by Robert Rodale in the pages of the February 1981 volume of Organic Gardening magazine.  His editorial was announcing the launch of the Cornucopia Institute, a group supporting local, small scale farmers, which is still going strong.  As seen below in this article on a movement in the north east US to bring back local grain production.

The Breadbasket of America: New England? | Cornucopia Institute

The Lesters offer a remarkable example of the creative, community-focused thinking that has driven the local foods movement for the past decade, and they are not alone. From Maine and Vermont to New York and Pennsylvania, a growing number of farmers, bakers, brewers, distillers, and food educators are working to create a regional grain network throughout the Northeast…Grain was a latecomer to the “eat local” movement but has proven a compelling addition. Whether or not it moves into the mainstream relies on how well the key players can work together.

The Brattleboro Food Co-op was begun in 1975 as a small buying club. Today, after our November 1997 expansion, the Co-op is a 16,000 square foot supermarket that is enjoyed by the Greater Brattleboro community, member and non-member alike.

garden_va

Originally uploaded by rodeworks

In the summer of 1992 we were living in Fairfax Virginia. I had my first ‘grown up’ garden — the first since high school days. The plot was in a community garden space. Because I was new in the group I was assigned a spot way up in the back. But it worked out well because I got a slightly larger plot. And I didn’t mind hauling my grass clippings up there to mulch.  It was a great garden year — fabulous broccoli. I even grew okra (it was the south after all!)

Leo often accompanied me to the garden, helping to pick produce, eating green beans off the plant, and picking from the raspberry bushes growing wild at the entrance.  What a cute little guy!

Planted the Red Wethersfield onion sets and the spanish yellow onion plants in the new onion bed today. Lots of worms in there — a good sign, right?

My typical garden session consist of carrying tools around the garden, setting them down somewhere, losing them, looking for them, etc. This year I decided things would be different! I purchased a really nice pair of Felco Pruners, and one of those tool caddies that fits around a plastic pail. Now I can move around more organized — nothing is perfect but it is a nice improvement.

The best purchase was a nice, comfortable, durable set of garden gloves. No more cheap, torn, cotton gloves for me.