I harvested our first Paris Market Carrots this week, and they’re delicious. I’m so pleased with how everything is doing. The collards, Swiss chard, beets, Chinese cabbage, Siberian kale, and Red kale are all doing great. Lettuce is still doing well, and asparagus is hard to keep up with. I am keeping all the greens dusted well with food grade diatomaceous earth, because there always seem to be ravenous chewing insects out here.
When I planted asparagus several years ago, I had two fairly small areas available for new starts, and we have plenty of asparagus every spring. My point is, don’t get discouraged if you think you don’t have enough room. Just find small patches to put it in. Ours is interspersed in our upper beds around the house, and it’s fronds are feathery and gorgeoous all summer.
Every once in a while I have a surprise in the garden, mainly because I’m not good about labeling things. I know, it seems like that would be something I’d do, and I have good intentions, but it doesn’t happen. Anyway, I have a lovely crop of radishes, and now some are quite large, but I’ll saute them in butter (they’re delicious that way). and those beautiful radish greens will get boiled briefly to remove the bitterness, then cooked in a frittata.
Last year I had a small row of poke salad come up in my garden. It’s a perennial, so it’s back again this year. It’s such a beautiful plant, I’ll leave it, and when I’m motivated to do the double boil, I’ll cook some this year.
One thing I’d like you guys to help me with is to help keep lots of seed diversity going. There are so many great things to plant, and the more narrow we make are choices, the more detrimental it is. Mother Earth has some great information about this, click here for the article. Seed Savers is one of the great resources for organic and open pollinated seeds.