Garden successes

Two months into the garden, things have really started to take off. The broccoli plants have given me the most this season so far, with a supply of around 10 or so small heads per week. Some sort of insect creature is attacking it, though, so I may have to replant.

It's harvest time for the romaine lettuce...

Zucchini squash has only been growing a few weeks and it's huge! It's competing with the potatoes for the fastest growing plant award.

The first tiny tomato - I believe this one is the Early Girl heirloom I got from a local nursery.

My daily Oregon Snow Pea harvest - which is becoming smaller and smaller every day. I've been freezing them for a continuous summer supply.

The spinach is starting to bolt because of the heat, so I'm going to harvest it all and put in some Ruby Swiss Chard instead.

Front to back - lettuce, spinach, 1/2 row of bush bean starts, and dying snow pea vines

My most recent problematic encounters have been the bugs feeding on the foliage (they sure are hungry) and the weeds which, mercilessly, seem to sprout back up a day after I pull them out. It's been really really hot (100 degrees last week!) and dry (your typical Colorado summer), so daily watering is a must. Can't wait to see what the water bill looks like this month! :)

Pea Time

I didn't think our snow pea vines were going to make it through the early season heat, but they proved me wrong. All of a sudden we got a bunch of little white flowers, which turned to pea pods practically overnight (pretty cool to watch how fast they grow).

 You pick snow pea pods before the peas actually develop inside the pod - while they are still nice and flat. They taste great right off the vine but I'm going to throw some in our thai pasta dish this week.

Overall I'm very impressed with this vegetable - it produced despite the unfavorable weather conditions. I'm going to plant a second round in mid-July for a second (and hopefully larger) Fall harvest. 

Fun Fact #2 - Potatoes

Here's something I bet you didn't know about potatoes: as potato plants grow, you're supposed to pile up soil on the plant, a process called "hilling." You do this right after the plant emerges and continually throughout the season.

Since potatoes grown beneath the soil, hilling gives them more room to produce larger tubers and keeps them from popping up out of the soil, which can turn them green and toxic (no poisonous spuds for me, thank you). 

Now that my potato plants are waist high, my only question is where can I get more dirt?

I've also noticed that the Yukon gold potato plants are producing white flowers, and the red potatoes have purple flowers. Although they seem to be doing great, I realized potatoes require a bit of faith - there's no way to know if there are any spuds actually growing down there. I'll have to dig around in a few weeks and see...

Yukon gold potato flower

 Red potato flower

You can also grow potatoes in garbage cans and old tires, check it out:

http://www.thegardenhelper.com/potato2.html

What I learned about spinach

It may just be the crazy weather here, but my first experience with growing spinach in the Spring didn't produce great results. Spinach needs cool temperatures to grow, but warm enough soil temperatures to germinate. The season started out okay (minus the snow) but this year it has gotten so hot so quickly, our Spring was basically nonexistent. The seedlings have been growing for quite some time and are still pretty tiny. Now, this may also be due to the fact that they were nibbled on by some kind of critter early on.

All in all, not a whole lot of spinach being eaten so far. I have gotten to pick some leaves here and there to throw in pastas and on sandwiches, but not quite as much as I was hoping for.

Fresh spinach, basil, and oregano from the garden - a perfect addition to my Vodka Pasta

(more on herbs later!) 

If at first you don't succeed, try try again, and I plan on doing just that in the Fall when the soil's nice and warm but temps are starting to cool down.