Monday Seedling Update and Harvest Tally

One of the most interesting things about going on vacation is coming back to the garden. Usually I see the garden every day. It grows, but each day the growth is small. After a week the growth seems huge. Leaves are touching. The garlic has grown much taller. Flower buds are bursting out. The seedlings are starting to look like plants.

These are the only seedlings left to be planted out in the garden. I have some extras that are still under the lights - peppers, tomatoes, marigolds and a solitary basil - but they probably won't make it into the garden. I'll only use them if there is a plant failure. The seedlings that will be planted out are pineapple tomatillos, lemon basil, and two types of eggplant. The seedlings are all doing well and I think those tomatillos need to get out soon. They are getting big. I'll probably put them in when I start seeing some good root growth from the bottom of the pots.

In the garden there aren't many seedlings left. Lots of plants, but few seedlings. The corn is starting to grow. Some is about 6" tall right now. Other not so much. About a quarter of the corn is weaker. A couple plants are dead already. I'm thinking I should have planted five soil blocks out for each hill, then I could thin one out and still have four per hill, but maybe three is a good number too.

My carrots seedlings are slowly growing. You can finally see the rows from above. The bottom row is Sugar Snax (hybrid) and it had the best germination and has the best growth. The top row is Danvers and is the next best germinating carrot. Most if its row is well filled out and the carrots are growing well. Big Top, which is the second row from the top is doing OK. Its germination is more spotty but still decent. Atomic Red had low germination and had damping off issues so that row is worse than spotty. It has lots of empty spots. I should still get to eat a few, but if it is as bad in future sowings, there is no way I'm growing it again.

Everything else in the garden is big. I think the prettiest thing I came back to was my spinach. I loved the way the morning light shone through the bed.

I had a good harvest of 10.5oz. I could have picked more, but I was just cutting off the big leaves. I started by cutting the stem at the bottom then clipping the stem off and letting it drop onto the bed. I figured if the stem rots it would be better on the ground than on the plant. Then it was taking too long and I just snipped the leaf off and left the stem on the plant. I hope that isn't bad for the plant at all. How do all you harvest spinach?

The next prettiest thing were the radishes. The Pinetree mix had some pretty ones, but I like the Reggea above. It seems to resist the slugs a bit more. I thought about showing you the French Breakfast radishes from the Pinetree mix, but some of them are so pitted from the little slugs. I even had to pick one off even though it was after 9am in the morning.

I picked most of the radishes (7oz with greens) this morning. I'm hoping to have time to make my radish top soup this week. I also picked some lettuce leaves and a bunching onion. The bunching onion was from the supermarket. It was dying in the vegetable bin. I put it out in the garden and it recovered and was good enough to pick today for my salad. Chives are OK but I much prefer my bunching onions.

I cheated a little today to get the harvest post out. Usually I do the harvest from Monday-Sunday and post on Monday. Since I wasn't home I just picked today and tallied that. The total harvest was 1.43lbs. My biggest harvest yet and I haven't even touched my Asian greens yet. I will. This brings me to a harvest dollar amount of $12.42. So it is slowly starting to add up. Luckily since I was gone last week I couldn't buy anything and my tally went down for the first time.