Hardening off seedlings on a mainly sunshiny day. I can see tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, Brussels sprouts, and bok choi. Some are for now, some a little down the line. I’ve been transplanting steadily bit by bit, rather than all out at one time, as a hedge against erratic weather changes. Same with direct seeding. It’s another experiment, and given our short season and the generally unpredictable weather, it’s risky. Then again, depending on the crop, I’ve seen plantings a week or two apart more or less even out. It’s always a gamble!
bok choi
Early mini-harvest
A small harvest of spinach and bok choi for dinner! It’s always a pleasant little shock to taste the first of the season’s garden-fresh veggies. After the winter months when the only fresh produce is grown in faraway lands, it’s a treat. In recent years, I used to buy a limited amount of veggies in winter. Onions if I ran out of my own. Green onions. Sometimes cauliflower and broccoli. Salad mix. Nowadays, I freeze spinach, kale and cauliflower. That, along with stored beets, carrots, and winter squash, covers most of the winter. So, for food satisfaction, the first new harvests every year are a big deal! :)
Mid-September harvest
The weather’s been fine, no big frost worries, and the harvest is nice. For the sake of a list, in no particular order, we have: spinach, onion, garlic, carrots, bok choi, broccoli, lettuce, cabbage, kale, hot and sweet peppers, cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, green beans, beets, and…eggplant! I think I got ’em all. The set-up on a strip of canvas is for a newsletter photo–the lighting is an overcast sun, the studio is the field!
Early summer harvest
Bigger harvest, still mostly green. Beets, snap peas, spinach, garlic scapes, zucchini, kale, green onions, arugula, bok choi.
Late season harvest
Looking pretty good for the end of October. Classic cool-season crops include leaf lettuce, pointy cabbage, bok choi and kale. Plus, the summer-loving sweet peppers are still hanging in.
Greens in the sun
Not the best place for them to be, basking in the sun, but it’s only for a moment, fresh in from the field, and they’re also bathing in chilly well water. Mustards, mizunas, lettuces, kales, bok choi, more… Salad mixes are what’s up for the moment, hanging in there and quite delectable, even as the heat and near total absence of rain continue for the third week straight!
First salad greens of the outdoor season
The season’s first field planting of salad greens, making a brief public appearance from under row cover, where they’re in flea beetle protection – we’re weeding today. Mustards, bok choi, arugula (a brassica relative), mizunas and more. So perfectly tasty, plucked straight from the ground, with a little dirt garnish for good measure…