Picked and Planted – 14 – 23 June

This week we picked:

Bok Choi, Kale and Swiss Chard

Market Express Turnip (and the greens) and Radishes

Oregano, Sage, Chives and Italian Parsley

Dinosaur and Ragged Jack Kale

1 Strawberry and 12 Haskap berries!

This week many of the cooler greens have begun to bolt – we still eat them, but it is a sign that our diet will be changing from a lot of lettuce and spinach to more early summer root veggies, kale and chard and hopefully peas very soon!! We will leave a few of them to flower and collect some seed for the fall, but most of them will head to the compost once the remaining leaves are removed.  This week also saw the end of the radish harvest.  I am a bit sad, I really like to snack on radishes and hummus (as does my summer waistline!!)  The kids, however, are quite happy to move on, though they are both sad that there will be no more fresh pesto until the garlic scapes are ready in a few weeks. The powerhouse veggie this week was the bok choi, which was priced at $3.99 for a package of 4 baby heads – we picked 16 tonight for stir fry!!

The only new players in the garden this week were one little strawberry and a handful of haskap berries, also known as honeyberries – these were an experiment 2 years ago and have done amazingly well around our deck.  We purchased them direct from LaHave Natural Farms Haskap Orchard as plugs and all 9 are now 2 feet tall and producing their wonderful early berry!

Approx savings compared to local market: $56.57 (Running total – $233.72)

Total weight picked this week: 6.86 lbs (Running total – 46.81 lbs)

This week we planted :

The garden is almost all planted!  This week I reseeded a few bare spots where carrots and beans failed to germinate with all of this rain and we planted the rest of my wee girl’s perennials that she had grown from seed or spent her birthday money on at plant sales (did I ever mention how much I love that kid?!)

I can only imagine how much the cost would have been for all of her flowers that she grew, but in fairness and honesty, I would never, ever, ever have bought 136 coleus or 86 rudbeckia from a greenhouse!!  Thankfully she has given away the majority of them as gifts to everyone from her teacher, to Niki Jabbour when we were invited to be on her radio show, The Garden Show on News 95.7 (was that ever fun – we were the 11am segment on June 7th!!) and to everyone who has come to our porch in the past few weeks!!

“Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon!” – Doug Larsen