Despite the awful weather and NO sunshine for about a week, quite a few tomatoes ripened in the greenhouse and the greens are from our salad beds:
12/25/10: New Zealand spinach, beets, arugula, lettuce, green onions
We planted the New Zealand spinach last spring and it just keeps on going:
12/25/10: New Zealand spinach
The New Zealand spinach (Baker Creek) produced all summer. I've read that it's invasive, but it has yet to spread. And we sure wouldn't mind!
Chards, beets, kale and a spicy salad mix in the new raised bed addition are coming along nicely too:
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We have not yet harvested. This bed is on the west side and doesn't get much sun.
Our raised beds are covered with plastic on 2 x 4 frames. The plastic keeps the wind out and keeps the greens a little warmer.
10/27/10 salad bed remodel / addition
In October we removed a few feet of the bed on the right because the roof drains there. Jose always had to protect it with a board and while it doesn't rain that often here, it still was a major hassle.
So we lost a few feet on one side, but added on around the corner to the west side of the garage. I transplanted some of the basil into pots and I keep cutting the flowers off, hoping to be able to plant it back outside in spring. We had 4 kinds of basil in this bed and it was taking over.
In the north bed volunteer lettuce came up and the arugula is still alive despite the freezes (9 degrees before Thanksgiving).
In one of our otherwise bare garden beds we recently discovered arugula. Maybe we put some seeds out in spring and they just now germinated? I see arugula coming up all over and it's not native to our area here. Maybe seeds were in the horse manure?
Our three sisters bed has lots of radishes, green onions are everywhere and in the four covered garden beds we recently seeded more salad. Have to remember to plant more radishes everywhere, not only to eat, but also to add nitrogen to the soil.
The salads have been our most successful crop — very little work and year round production. I just built a salad bed in the new greenhouse and we'll soon have lots of chards, beets and lettuce seedlings to transplant.
I'll try to post pics of the tomatoes and the new carport / greenhouse and our new solar air and water heaters soon.
Great looking salad! Everything looks good. The New Zealand spinach looks different than what I called New Zealand spinach. Now, I’ll have to check it out to see what is what.
Well, we’re pretty sure it’s New Zealand spinach (Baker Creek), although it took a long time to come up.
But we’re known to get confused with salads, had so many different seeds and also mixes, those really make it difficult to figure out what’s what.