Today, Easter, was our first big harvest out of the veggie garden in 2009. We’ve been stealing a few leaves from lettuces, spinach, sorrel and kale all winter. And, we’ve had herbs a-plenty throughout the freezes. But, today began what looks to be a bountiful year of fresh foods from the garden.
Easter 2009 Edible HArvest
Before we headed out to the farmer’s market this morning, we opened our hoop houses to let the lettuce, spinach, kale, cauliflower, chard and cabbage drink in the heavenly downpour that arrived today. There’s nothing like water from the sky (rather than the spigot) to make a plant happy. I took note that it is time to start harvesting lettuces, near-flowering dinosaur kale that had overwintered, sorrel that is spreading, and that spinach is just days away. This meant huge savings for us at the market.
After I returned from the market with potatoes, carrots, hot cross buns, a dozen eggs and a couple loaves of local bread, I donned my gardening gear and braved the downpour. I divided and transplanted lettuces from 4″ pots to gallons and from gallons to larger decorative containers. Then I potted up cauliflower and cabbage into gallon containers to give them some more space. I moved tomatoes from sterile mix to 4″ pots. And I topped everything with vermicompost from our wormbin, and I watered everything in. I took a quick peek at the sterile starts from last weekend and found basil and corn germinating readily. Curbits, cilantro, and beans are poking along a bit more slowly. I set out some egg crates and compostable takeaway containers filled with sterile mix & watered those to soak so I can seed zinnia, marigolds, sunflowers and more beans soon.
Easter Eggs for the Gardener
Then, I looked around and asked my beautiful garden for dinner table volunteers. Kale waved its budding tips suggesting I pull them before the flowers made them more bitter. Heads of buttercrunch lettuce threatened to squirm out of their too-tight pots in order to plop into my basket. Sorrel shot upward into my hands. Pansies winked their colorful eyes just begging to be included in the mix. Crowded garlic begged I thin a few to throw into our stew. And finally, down below, in large pots on the floor of the greenhouse, I caught a glimmer of pink and a flash of red — low and behold the culmination of my Easter hunt — a first fistfull of easter egg and red icicle radishes to make our basket (and our dinner salad) that much better!
So, what did it save me? Well, I honestly can’t tell you exactly how much soil, water and individual seed has cost to grow these plants. But I bet it’s cost less than $5 to grow all of this (and the additional crops to come). Compare that to today’s farmer’s market prices:
- $4/bunch for sorrel
- $2.50/bunch for radishes
- $5/bag for salad mix
- $5/bag for braising greens (my closest kale comparison)
- $4/bunch for baby leeks (my closest garlic comparison)
- and I didn’t see any pansies for comparison.
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Tags: edible garden, farmer's markets, growing edibles, Localvore, vermicompost, worm bin
I envy you already pulling produce from your garden. We are still thawing out up here.
I don’t envy you the long winters. We may have thunder-snow storms tomorrow, which sure makes those April showers extra interesting! Still, odds are we’ll just have rain, rain and more rain…