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It's great to be home, and not just because the veggie garden is bearing fruit!  Nonetheless, it was very, very nice to go down to the plot and survey the miracles.

There are tomatoes on the way.

The plants were donations from the public gardens greenhouses, so we don't know what varieties to expect.  I deliberately chose plants with different leaves, though.  

Zucchinis galore.

Beans being babies.

We even dug up some garlic!  I'm very excited about that.

The radishes had bolted! It's amazing.  We pulled up the enormous, woody-stemmed plants.  There were radish-looking things at the base of many of them.  We'll see what they taste like later.

I also picked some more green onions.  They're not obviously minding being very close-packed.  I think I'll enjoy eating lots of little tender baby spring onions instead of proper-sized bunching onions.  

The potatoes are flowering and looking very promising.  After the success of last year's potatoes, I can't wait for the first creamy bite of fresh potato this summer.  

I pulled up a few of the beets to make room for their neighbours.  I'll make beet greens out of their leaves; there isn't really enough beet on most of them to be worth cooking.  

A few years ago, I had edible beet greens for the first time.  I had previously always treated beet greens like spinach and as a result hated them and stopped trying to eat them.  Then my own dear and wise mother showed me the way and I've been an enormous beet green fan ever since. Remember that this is a recipe for people who like to eat food because it tastes good.  This isn't for a purist who wants to extract the maximum amount of vitamins from their vegetables.  

Beet Greens:

Wash the greens thoroughly (rinse at least 3 times, more if the water is still sandy).  Toss the undried greens into a pot with a heavy bottom and a lid.  Let them cook down in the water that was clinging to them.  Cover them and stir frequently, making sure that the leaves don't stick.  Boil the heck out of them.  Boil them until the stems are starting to be properly limp (more limp than you'd want your asparagus, but less limp than spaghetti) and then take the lid off.  Add butter (let's guess about a teaspoon per 1/2 lb of greens) and minced garlic and let the water boil off, stirring all the while.  You should be left with a lovely buttery red sauce and delicious beet greens.  I sometimes add the garlic while there is quite a lot of water remaining in the pot, which basically allows me to add several cloves without anyone noticing much because the boiling makes the garlic a little more mild, but it infuses the sauce more, too.  

Radish Harvest

The radishes are up and at them.  The sweary one showed them to me as we were iChatting  last night and I took a screen snap.  It's not a good picture, but you have to admit, they are radishes.

Best of all, they're radishes that are beautiful and red and not split or worm-eaten.  It's good.  A happy day.

Potato heads

The first potatoes are peeking through now.  The one in the garlic corner is most definitely up and at 'em.

Only one of the set of four is showing its head.

The peas are amazing.  I can't believe we have actual peas from our first batch of indoor peas!  We ate some peas this afternoon.  They were sweet and perfect.  Yum.

The healthy ones are producing lovely flowers.  

Even the struggling peas are really pretty.

The new ones are coming up OK, too.

The beans are growing like crazy.  They are also getting a bit eaten.  

I had to thin a bit this afternoon.

As I've said before, I hate pulling out a living plant.  It makes me worry that the one I've left in will die and then I'll regret my choice.  

The radishes are flourishing.  I look forward to the first bite of radish. Not too long to wait, by the looks of things.

The beets seem to be OK.  They got thinned yesterday and so far none of the ones I left behind are dying.  

The onions need thinning.  Oh, yes they do.  They do resemble grass.

Actually, they look a bit like a magical forest in this picture.  I used my work camera's super macro for these.  Pretty good, I think.

The forest needed thinning, no matter what. 

I did some thinning (this is the same region as above).  

I couldn't face the whole row, though.  The pile of tiny dead bodies was very high.  

More thinning later, I guess.  Hopefully, more delectable peas, too!

Onion grass

We stopped by the plot on our way home this afternoon.  No camera; no pictures. 

The walking onions are looking pretty good.  We should figure out something to do with them.  Pasta maybe?

We thinned the beets and radishes and got rid of a weed or two.  We need to address the problem of the enthusiastically-planted scallions.  This is entirely my doing.  I planted all the seeds in the package and I didn't worry about the separation.  I reckoned that we could do the thinning later, and besides the package was over a year old so I could assume that the germination rate wouldn't be high.  Oops.  The overall effect is very like grass.  Thinning is the wrong word.  I need some way of getting rid of huge clumps of scallion sprouts. 

Maybe I can combine the sprouts with the walking onion flowers for a pungent addition to potato salad?  

First Fruit!

Exciting news, everyone!  There are PEAS growing from the pea plants in our garden plot!  Yey!

All in all, the plot is going very well.  There are lots and lots of scallions coming up on the far left of the picture below.  There are so many scallion shoots that it just looks like grass in some places.  It needs thinning.  There are egyptian walking onions in the back, flourishing.  There are beets and radishes doing very very well.  The beets need thinning and so do the radishes, but not quite as desperately as the beets.There are new peas (the indoor peas that survived being put out before the snow are the ones that are producing pods right now) sprouting in the back of the picture below, and there are zucchini to the left and beans in the middle and at the far right is some flourishing garlic.  The egyptian walking onions might be said to be bearing fruit, too.  I think the flowers are the edible bits.The new peas are doing just fine.The radishes are going gangbusters.  Are they ever fun to grow!  I remember the very first year we tried to grow things in a barrel in our back yard and the radishes at least sprouted.  So eager.The garlic really does look good.  We're all very pleased at the thought of home-grown garlic.  
As yet unsprouting are 5 potatoes.  Our plan is to eat the beets, radishes, and scallions and put cucumbers in their place.  That's what we did last year and it worked a treat.  Maybe this year, I'll start a plant or two indoors so we can have production going quickly (like those FABULOUS peas!!!).   I'd like to have some more veggies on the go at the house.  It was fun to watch them come up.  

More life, more gardening

We went to the plot this evening after work.  I didn't bring a camera, so there is no photographic evidence of: A MIRACLE!

The peas are flowering.  There are no less than 2 blooms on the very same peas that are "lying down" after their hard, wintery weeks while we were living it up.  I am very impressed.  

We planted, starting at the south: a row of scallions, a row of beets and a row of radishes.  There follows a trench for us to walk in and then there is a row of zucchini and a row of beans.  To the west there are more peas near the ones already struggling to survive.   The blob west of the trench is free for potatoes when we can.  Let's hope that the seeds do alright.  I dumped all of the package in to the trenches, so we'll have a lot of thinning to do, hopefully.

I spent most of the time at the plot uprooting dandelions.  They are EVERYWHERE in the garden; a real pest.  The biggest trouble with them is that the slugs love 'em and use them as shelter before ransacking ones peas.  Since I can't be having competition for my peas, the slugs and their dandelion homes have got to go.  Of course, I didn't get all of them.  I pulled up every plant within 6 inches of our plot.  Furthermore, only about 10% of those (if I am lucky) were fully pulled up.  Most of the roots snapped.  I suspect there will be many times more dandelions popping up.  I know that constant vigilance is required, but I am the inconsistent gardener.  I won't be around for a couple of weeks.  The consistent dandelions will win this one, for sure.