Harvest Monday - May 19, 2013

This past week was a great week for salad greens. I harvested endive, romaine lettuce and arugula. I really like fresh salad but I am sad to say that I'm not sure I love home grown romaine lettuce. I've gotten accustomed to store bought which always is much more crunchy and juicy - and the taste is not as intense - meaning not as earthy - as the ones I have at home. Maybe I'm not growing them right or I don't have the right variety. I still like them, but I prefer to mix it with some store bought romaine lettuce.

I also thinned the cilantro, but the "thinned" plants were big enough to eat. Was very fresh tasting and delicious. I think I'll start a second container so that I'll have more. I just love cilantro!

I'm also getting small, but steady harvest of snow peas. I'm hoping I'll get more before the weather gets too warm. My oldest container of snow peas are starting to yellow at the base.

I'm joining harvest Monday at Daphne's dandelions. Happy gardening everyone!

Herbs herbs herbs!

If there is one thing a city dweller with limited space should grow, it would be herbs.  Having fresh herbs just adds great flavor to any dish and it makes simple dishes feel fancy.  Basil may be my favorite herb to have since I use it the most. Plus little baby basil is really cute.

Sweet basil reaching for the sun

Close up of sweet basil

Sweet basil's smaller cousin, thai basil

Thai basil close up

This year, I used seeds sent by Carol (thank you) and started cilantro and I LOVE it. I'm not sure why I never paid too much attention to this herb. Maybe because when I buy it at the store, you have to get a bunch and I can never use it up. It always ends up rotting in my fridge and I hate picking out the good parts from the slimy bits. Having it grow fresh in the garden lets me pick just the right amount when I need it. Fantastic!

Bushy cilantro

Cilantro's delicate leaves

I also have an abundance of rosemary. My oldest rosemary plant is looking so good right now with yellow leaves. Just overall it looks sad. I have to say I usually don't tend to the rosemary because I feel like it is pretty tolerant to disease. The yellowing leaves could mean that I am not giving it enough water or it needs some nutrients. It is probably a combination of both since I truly neglect this poor plant. I added a couple of scoops of compost to the base of the plant and watered it. Let's see if this will give it some color.

My not so happy rosemary

Yellowing leaves

New seedlings

I have new seedlings! Exciting. I started tomatoes, peppers, and summer squash 2 weeks ago. I also tried using the ichiban eggplant seeds that I harvested but I must have done something wrong while collecting the seeds because it is not germinating. I'll just keep waiting to see it just needs more time but I might just have to go buy starter plants. Oh well, I'll try seed saving again this year - this time I'll do a little more research so I have viable seeds. The tomatoes I started are supersweet 100, cherokee purple and pink champions (from Annie). The pepper seeds (Giant Chinese pepper) germinated a week after the tomatoes.

The empty ones are the ichiban seeds that did not germinate

I also started some cilantro (again from Annie - thanks so much!). I read somewhere that cilantro seeds (aka corriander) contain 2 seeds per pod so it should be cracked before sowing. I'm not sure if splitting the seeds helped but it only took about a week to germinate. Right now they are on the windowsill but I'm thinking once they are reasonably grown I'll transfer them to the pots in front on the house.

cilantro seedlings

Some more cilantro