Trimmed and ready to cook!:
I think I've finally figured out how to cook these guys. I steamed them for 2 1/2 minutes and sprinkled them with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Yum! Everyone agreed it was the best asparagus we've ever had.
In other news, I added the cabbage and lettuce plants that I started inside a month and a half ago to the garden, and... they were promptly eaten by rabbits. Grrrrr. Thebunnies wasted no time. I added the plants to the garden at 4pm on Friday, and by 7am Saturday morning they were chomped. This was my first time starting lettuce inside and planting cabbage at all. My garden's never been bothered much by critters. Lesson learned. Must protect baby greens with netting.
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| Chomped lettuce |
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| Chomped cabbage |
Around what's left of my lettuce and cabbage, I planted beet, kale, arugula (my favorite!) and more lettuce seeds. I'm kind of excited to see what happens with the beets. I've never had much luck with them, so I haven't tried to grow them in a few years. Last year I met a guy at a garden seminar who said he experimented by putting an inch or so of grass clippings on top of his garden bed and planting the beet seeds *in* the grass clippings. He said that was the first time he's had *giant* beets. So I did one square foot of beets in grass clippings and three square feet sowed directly in the soil, as usual. Stay tuned to see which beets win!
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| See the square in the far corner covered in grass? Go beets, go! |
I also finally got around to planting my peas. They're in the section of soil on the far left, below. That's garlic in the other two sections. I plant peas differently than most gardeners. The traditional way is to plant a thin row or two of them next to a trellis. The thing is, we like *lots* of peas, so instead of doing the trellis thing, I fill up an entire bed with them. I try to get a variety with a short vine (this year I planted Dwarf White Sugar snow peas from Park Seed). The pea plants use each other as trellises, and it seems to work out OK. For more, see my This is How We Plant the Peas entry from last spring.
One of the best parts of having a garden blog is looking back to see what was happening last year at this time. It definitely seems like we're a week or two behind as far as flowers blooming and how green/big everything is this year. Dang you, Polar Vortex!
