Harvesting Homegrown Salads

The garden, now over fifty containers, is growing well. We’ve had a bit of bad luck, but for the most part it seems that our efforts are paying off.

After several attempts to grow lettuces, we have finally decided that the first batch of soil we used was no good. Unfortunately, it took success from the ground garden below the deck to convince us that our container lettuces weren’t going anywhere – nearly three months after our first attempt! We’re pretty sure that the problem was too much mushroom compost. Knowing that lettuces need lots of nitrogen, our first batch of soil was probably about 45% mushroom compost (it should’ve been more like 25-33%). It also might have been the poorer quality top soil we had been using originally.

Another big mistake was the late planting of our precious peas. Since the seed packet told us that peas don’t like soggy spring weather, we thought that meant we ought to wait until after the soggy weather ended. Oh, how wrong we were. Kacie broke the bad news to me last week – and since then we’ve found that everyone knows you plant your peas no later than St. Patrick’s Day! Bummer! I’m quite certain that peas are a plant-relative of elves – their shape, color and grace remind me so much of the magical race. They were a wonderful addition to our garden (when other growth seemed somewhat stagnant). They were growing tall, and green until about 10 days ago when they suddenly started turning yellow and drying up. We’ve learned our lesson: soggy weather is one thing (and a few peas did rot under the soil before germinating) but peas won’t stand for the heat. We’ll try again for a fall crop once the summer heat lets up, but in the meantime we’ll dig up the dying peas and replant with fava beans, which are more (although not incredibly) heat tolerant.

The other bad news is that the squirrels are still with us. Turns out, our sunflowers (now over two feet tall) are squirrel bait. They climb up the side of the deck, take a bite out of the top of the flower and leave the leaves on the deck wall – just to be jerks. The good news, is that the sunflowers (along with our hanging basket strawberries) seem to occupy the squirrels enough to protect our other plants.

Besides these few problems, things are going very well! We’ve had a few wonderful salads harvesting beet greens and the lettuces from the ground garden below. With a little help from our friends – thanks Laurie and Charlie! – we have enjoyed homegrown kale, chard, collards, arugula and other greens. Nasturtium leaves, too (pictured at left) are delicious! Somehow, they taste like blue cheese – who knew?

Happy Independence Day, everyone!