First Radish

This is a heirloom variety called Plum Purple Radish. It's supposed to be bright purple, but mine is more of a pale rose colour (next time I'll take a photo after I wash off the dirt).

Anyway, it tasted good. It wasn't really very "radishy", but it was quite spicy!

First Lettuce Harvest

On Tuesday, I harvested the first 2 heads of lettuce. They were still very young and super delicious. Even DH liked them and he usually hates salad. Since Tuesday, we've been eating 2 heads a day, so yesterday I planted three more buckets of greens: Magenta Mountain Orach, Rouge d'Hiver lettuce and Rouge de Grenoblaise lettuce.

Self-Watering Planter Update

The camera is working again, so I thought I would update on all of the self-watering containers (except for the tomatoes which are still in the basement). All of these containers are listed in the sidebar.

I filled the reservoir in each container when I originally planted it. Otherwise, I have not had to do any watering! Each time it rains the reservoir fills up again and so far that has been sufficient. I'm guessing that later in the summer when plants are bigger and days are hotter and rain is more infrequent I'll have to water more, but so far the containers have been incredibly convenient!

Spinach

The spinach in the self-watering planter has caught up to the spinach in my raised bed even though it was planted a couple of weeks later.

You can see some of the damage from the hail storm last week, but the plants are doing well.

We like baby spinach, so I'll start harvesting the outer leaves from each spinach plant this week.




Radish:

These are a heirloom variety called Plum Purple Radish. They're almost 4 weeks old now, but definitely aren't ready for harvest. I'm a bit worried because when I tried these indoors they never produced and enlarged root.




Arugula:

Just a regular variety. I need to plant a lot of more of this because I would like to make and freeze a bunch of arugula pesto and I also want to be able to use it in salads.





Lettuce:

I started these under a grow light and transplanted them into the outdoor container in mid-April.


We'll be eating these in the next week or two and replanting this bucket with basil.




Potato:

This is a fingerling potato. I only filled the planter up half-way with soil so that I can add more as the plant grows. The stem that gets buried will become part of the root system and will produce more potatoes.

I'm not expecting the potato crop to be cost effective -- potatoes are cheap and I don't think I'll get very many. However, I still remember visiting my uncle's farm and helping to dig up potatoes. It's a very satisfying vegetable to harvest.

Carrots, Garlic and Onion:

On the left are a heirloom variety of carrot called Danver Half-Long.

The bucket in middle has garlic and on the right is a bucket of onion.






Swiss Chard:

This variety is called Bright Lights and has multicoloured stalks. I have two planters of this.










Zucchini:

This was transplanted last week from a sprouted seed. It's a heirloom variety called Cocozelle Zucchini.

I have two buckets of this.

Conventional Veggies

Although I've planted vegetables in self-watering containers this year, I also have vegetables planted in my raised-bed garden. I've done this type of vegetable gardening for a couple of years now.

I started spinach (at the front of the pic), red lettuce, and green lettuce under 3 cloches back in March.

I planted the onion in mid April and I plan to harvest these as green onions (the set I bought had a picture of green onions on the front and was called "multiplier onions") but I'm not sure how/when to harvest them. If anyone knows, please help!

Self-Seeded Cilantro and Lettuce

I LOVE cilantro, and I've got dozens of baby cilantro plants growing in my raised bed from the plant that went to seed last year. Here's a picture of a just a few of them (in amongst the weeds):



Cilantro plants are even growing between my patio stones and between the bricks that make up the wall for the raised bed.



I had to get rid of some of these to make way for other plantings, but there are tons that I'll leave to harvest when they're bigger. I use these to make Thai spring rolls (in rice paper wrappers) and for tons of other recipes. It's one of my favourite herbs.










Last year I must have let a Red Butterworth lettuce go to seed because I also have TONS of red lettuces growing. (Yes, I know I need to weed ...)

No more pictures for now ...

I slipped on the stairs while carrying the camera outside to take some pictures of the garden and now it's broken. So no more pictures until we can replace the VERY VERY EXPENSIVE lens.

I wanted to show some pictures of the hail storm on Saturday morning. The hail was about the size of marbles and it wreaked havoc on my spinach and radish especially (although I think they'll survive).

I also wanted to show pictures comparing how various vegetables are doing in the self-watering planters versus how well they're doing in my conventional raised bed garden. I have spinach, radishes, carrots and onions in both places and every single vegetable is doing better in the self-watering containers.

Aurora Hot Pepper Blossom

I started my Aurora Hot Pepper plants a couple of months ago under my grow light. Now one of the plants has a gorgeous blossom on it. I know I should snip this off since the plants still need to be hardened off before they're transplanted outside, but it hurts ...

The Self-Watering Planters

I now have a total of 14 self-watering planters in the back-yard as well as my conventional raised bed. All of the self-watering planters are built the same way. So far everything has sprouted except for the potato and everything is doing really well! On the left you can see my spinach. So far, I have spinach, arugula (rocket), potato, lettuce, garlic, onion, carrot, radish, and swiss chard.

Garden Update -- Bad Blogger, Good Gardener -- Part 2!

Even though I've been taking lots of pictures of the garden, I never seem to find the time to actually sit down at the computer and update my blog. So, now I'm going to update on all my plants in one enormous blog so that I'll be up to date. Hopefully, from now on I can keep it that way!

Here's an update on everything except the status of my recently planted self-watering containers. That will come in the next post.

Critters and the Peas:

So far everthing is growing pretty well. Most of the self-watering planters have sprouted and my perennials are coming up really nicely in my regular garden bed. I've only lost a few plants to the raccoons and wild cats that are becoming such a nuisance in our neighbourhood.

The worst loss was my peas. Out of about 20 plants, only 4 ended up growing thanks to some animal that dug up the bed every night looking for grubs. I've replanted where nothing grew hopefully I'll have better luck this time.

Interestingly, I planted my peas in the same traditional raised garden bed that I always plant in. My brother planted seeds from the same pack (Mammoth Melting Sugar Peas) on the same morning in early April in the self-watering planters that we're both using this summer. He had a 100% success rate with his peas and they popped out of the ground a full 2 weeks earlier then mine. Probably because the first half of this April has been pretty dry and I was not disciplined about watering regularly. Also, even though he's been battling the critters full-force, he's still had way more success. Chalk one up for the self-watering planters!


Strawberries and Horseradish:

A friend has given me a horseradish plant and several strawberry plants. I put most of the strawberries in self-watering planters, but I also put a few in my normal garden bed, so we'll see which grows better.


Fruit Trees:

We have a plum tree and a pear tree in the backyard and an enormous apricot tree in the frontyard. The apricot and plum are in blume and they are gorgeous. Believe me, my photography does not do them justice.






My Perennials:

I got this rhubarb 4 or 5 years ago from my Aunt who lives in the house where she and my mom and their siblings grew up. This rhubarb was originally planted by my grandparents. It seems to like my backyard and I love rhubarb.

To the left of the photo you can kind of see my Sweet Woodruff which has spread out of the back garden plot (which is a real mess) into where the grass is supposed to grow, which is fine with me. It's a really pretty ground cover. I'm planning on transplanting some of this to my front yard garden (which is also a mess) since it likes the shade so much.

My perrenial herbs are coming up nicely. I have oregano, chives, tarragon, lemon balm, and lavendar. I'll add basil, parsley, rosemary and cilantro in the next few weeks.

Here's my tarragon:


and here's the chives: