Garden update

I've been a little disappointed because my digital camera has pretty much stopped taking pictures that are recognizable as anything. I was hoping to document my garden with pictures. Oh, well. It hasn't stopped stuff from growing.

Last night I did my first thinning of spinach and ended up with a small plate of baby spinach leaves. I shared it with my housemates and everyone thought they tasted great. I will probably thin them again in a couple of weeks.

The onions are growing fast. Many of them are nearing a foot tall. I haven't quite decided if I'm going to harvest some of them early as green onions and plant some Evergreen White bunching onions in their place.

I've been thinning the carrots over the past week. They are a little slow growing, but some have started to develop their second set of true leaves.

I've also been thinning the mesclun (mixed greens), but none have really been big enough to eat. I'll continue slowly thinning them over the next few weeks.

The radishes are getting bigger. I'll probably start harvesting those in about two weeks. I planted another half row of them last week, but they haven't started sprouting yet.

The first planting of cilantro is doing alright, but growing a little slow, but noticeable, right now. A couple of them didn't sprout so I have a bare spot there. I planted the last of my seeds last week. It will probably be at least 2 more weeks before they start to sprout.

The chives and leeks seem to have slowed a little. Hopefully when there is more consistently sunny days they will grow faster. I'm going to have to thin the leeks a lot. I'm not sure about the chives yet.

The rosemary is barely doing anything. Seven seeds have sprouted so far, but don't seem to be doing much growing beyond the first set of leaves. More sun will probably also be the ticket for them.

Last week I bought a couple of tomato starts from a nearby nursery. They were only $2 each and had thick, healthy stems. I went for Roma tomatoes because they are better for stuff like tomato sauce and salsa. Next year I will probably look around a little more and go for tomatoes that are proven to do even better in this area.  I left them at Erik's, in his greenhouse, for a few days. We put one on its side in an experiment. We had both read that this was supposed to be good for a healthy root system so I decided to do it with one of the plants. It doesn't really make much sense to me, but we'll see what happens. Saturday I went ahead and planted both of them in my garden. I used a couple of tomato cages that were here with some semi-clear plastic sheeting that my housemates had to make cloches. These should help with the cooler night time temperature, although nights are almost at 50 degrees now.

The sunflowers I planted in the front aren't doing very well. It was just an experiment anyway. The seeds were from a bag of sunflower seeds from a grocery store. There are about 11 or 12 of them growing, some better than others. I didn't help that I misunderstood the instructions Mary Kate gave me and I planted the seeds I sprouted in the attic upside down with the tap root pointing up out of the ground. It seemed strange at the time and stupid to me now, but I thought I was doing what she told me. I bought an actual packet of Soraya sunflower seeds last weekend and will probably plant them this weekend if the weather is nice. They should get to about 5-7 feet tall and have multiple flowers on each plant. I'm looking forward to seeing these.