Harvest Monday 4/22/13

Happy Earth Day!!  I hope everyone gets to spend some time digging in the dirt and appreciating nature.  It has been a busy gardening week here.  I've been trying to plant the old and new garden.  I keep forgetting to take pictures of the new garden because by the time I remember to load all the tools, seedlings, seeds, watering can, and anything else I might need into my car, the camera has been long forgotten.  I did get all the tomato seedlings planted, half of the peppers planted, lettuce seeds sowed, and a 50 ft row of sunflowers planted!  I think I went a bit overboard with the size of the new garden since I have room for that many sunflowers.  The birds and rodents are going to love me!

Anyway, back to harvest Monday.  This week I harvested most of the leeks (2.1 lbs).  These have been in the garden forever!  Well, at least it seems like forever.  I planted them last spring, so a year later I finally harvested and ate them.  I made them into little Leek and Potato Pies and the leek tops I will use to make some vegetable stock.  I doubt I will ever grow many leeks because they take up space in the garden for so long, but they seem easy to grow and you can ignore them for a very, very long time.

Also this week I harvested the first of the spring planted crops: spinach leaves!  I pulled a couple of little carrots and picked some more broccoli side shoots.  The broccoli is completely covered in aphids right now.  I soaked the broccoli in water to try and get all the aphids off, followed by a high pressure spray in every direction.  I still had to inspect every bite before eating!

This week's tally:

Broccoli: 1.3 oz
Spinach :1.6 oz
Carrots: 2.1 oz
Leeks: 2.1 lbs

Weekly total: 2 lbs, 5 oz

That's all the harvests coming from my garden this week, to see what others are harvesting check out Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions.