1st Harvest Monday!!

Left: Before Harvest
Right: After Harvest


So up to this point we've had a tiny bit of lettuce and about 2 cherry tomatoes, so I haven't been posting for harvest Monday, but today I am happy to report that I have a harvest! All of the lettuce we planted was ready for harvest, just in time for J's birthday dinner. The lettuce was delicious, with a great flavor and crispness. And, along with about 5 cherry tomatoes from our Aerogarden it made the perfect dinner salad! Yay for a harvest!Generally, for your birthday in our house, you get to pick whatever you want for the whole meal, so to go along with the homegrown salad, we had some homemade macaroni and cheese and J requested that I bake him a pineapple upside down cake. I've enver made one before, and I think I've only eaten once once, so it was quite the challenge, but I think I did pretty well. And it was darn tasty!!

Happy Birthday J!

Cold Weather Plants

There are a few things I planted quite a while ago, but I don't think I've mentioned them here since. All the cold weather plants are loving the cool Spring we're having. At least something likes it.
My kale is finally starting to take off. I think I transplanted it too soon from the seedling tray, and I think I was keeping it too warm at first. It didn't look like it was going to make it for a while, but it's pulled through and seems to be enjoying the greenhouse. I keep the door of the greenhouse open all the time, unless we have a frost warning, so it gets the cool temperatures at night and doesn't get overheated during the day.
The peas are really slow growing. I guess I expected they'd be larger now. How long after sowing should they start flowering? According to my records, these peas were planted 1/22 and sprouted 1/27, but they still seem tiny for being 3 months old, no? I've also added a few more seeds in to keep them going - yay succession planting. One round of seeds on 3/11 and another round last weekend, so I'm hoping they'll do better. The second and third set also got inoculant, so hopefully that will help.
Spinach and carrots are still small, but growing strong. Can't wait for a delicious salad! And speaking of salad, my very sad looking outdoor lettuce is looking decidedly less sad lately. It might even be ready for eating soon. Sorry there's no photo of that.

Salad

The larger Aerogarden I got J for his birthday has really taken off. The salad greens grew faster and look way better than our traditionally grown ones in soil. If I'm remembering correctly, we planted it all about 3-4 weeks ago and finally had our first harvest of lettuce! 2 7/8 ounces of delicious, healthy salad greens! A very tasty addition to our dinner.I tried not to cut it too low, so they should grow back for round two, right?

Labels!

Yesterday's post gave it away a little bit, but look how beautiful the label maker makes the seedling tray look!
The long tall sprouts at the back is the kale and everything else is the lettuce seeds I just planted. So many varieties should ensure great salads in not too many weeks!