Spring Garden Notes, May 11, 2015

Today was overcast and windy, but I did manage to get a little done in the garden.  I planted a few melons and a row of sunflowers in front of the turkey pen.

I tore out all of the snow pea plants -- the chickens enjoyed rustling through them all day today.  They made a nice boredom buster!

 All of the carrots came up this year, even the seeds that were several years old.  They've had a real growth spurt lately!

 The yellow squash in Bed#4 have arrived!  This is the "Butter Dish" squash from Burpee Seeds.

 Today I found a tiny little Kikuza squash on the Squash Haus...

 ...and a Tromboncino!  I actually found two of these today.  This have become my favorite squash to grow, and the taste is fantastic.

 The squash vines have finally met at the back of the squash haus at the top.  The front hasn't filled in as nicely, but we still have time.

 I wish you could see this yellow cherry tomato plant -- it is completely weighed down by many, many branches of tomatoes.

This Snow White tomato is the tallest so far -- it's reached the top of the sun shade!

 I did find that the center of a couple of the Early Flat Dutch cabbages were unblemished after removing quite a bit of the outer leaves.  This one was about 1/2 pound.

I got myself a new kitchen toy this year, a salad spinner! Why have I waited this long to get one of these? I cleaned and chopped up a good batch of greens today for salads for this week (Red Romaine, Crisphead Lettuce, two types of Swiss Chard, the cabbage, two types of spinach, and the dwarf Pak Choy in the next picture.)  That spinner does a great job of removing water from the greens (found on Amazon!)

This evening we went back out to the garden and picked another 1-1/2 pounds of green beans, then fixed them for supper with ham, garlic and new potatoes!

We also picked a few jalapenos and a bunch of cucumbers! Aren't they lovely?! John is dreaming of cucumber and tomato salad.

This is the luffa gourd blooming.  Pretty little yellow flowers.

It's supposed to rain here all week, but we've yet to see any of it.  The skies have been overcast and its even thundered, but no rain.  Hopefully we'll have some tonight.