My old nemesis......vegetables!

It's true...they're gross. At least most every vegetable I've tried in my life has been. However, I'm realizing more and more, that produce from the store and produce from the ground outside of your house, are two very different things...especially where taste is concerned. Last year, we were home for the tail end of the carrot harvest and they were unlike anything I had ever tasted from any grocery store chain. They were crisp, sweet, light and refreshing. I felt like I could climb a mountain (or at least a pretty steep hill) after I ate them. This was so very different from the tough, stringy, chewy and oddly tasteless foe of my school lunches from long ago. This is why I've decided to take a good share of the veggie variety on in my plot. I figure I might be more inclined to try those once yucky veggies again if I grow them myself. 

Arial view of the broccoli. 2 little purple
plants, side by side. The leaves double as
a salad green, yummy! (I think)

Outside I'll have: Cosmic Purple, Atomic Red, Solar Yellow & Oranges Nates Half Long carrots, Rouge d'Hiver, Matchless & Valimine lettuce, New Zealand spinach, Coustralee, Brandywine Pink, Golden Sunburst, Black Krim, Green Sausage & Djena Lee's Golden Girl tomatoes (Rainbow Heirloom Mix), Mexican Strain tomatillos, jalapeno peppers, habanero peppers, anaheim peppers, cherry bomb peppers, Connecticut Field pumpkins, Dragon's Tongue beans (they have purple spots!!), and Purple Peacock broccoli in the greenhouse. 

Look at all those tomatoes!

I started the lettuce, tomatoes, tomatillos, and hot peppers in peat pods. I planted one seed of each lettuce variety (3 total) in each pod. All the pods germinated at least 2 varieties, with several sprouting all three! The lettuce, tomatoes and tomatillos did wonderfully...the hot peppers, on the other hand, are proving to be a sort of Achilles' Heal for the farm (last years go was disappointing as well.) I have about a half dozen jalapeno plants that are viable but look pretty puny. They've been kept in the hot part of the green house (as they prefer) and watered well (but not overly) and they just don't seem to have much oomph. I'm hoping to see improvement when we transplant soon.

360 deg. automated sprinkler...oh, yeah.

The carrots and spinach needed to be direct sown in May and the lettuce starts were ready for transplant then as well. An elevated bed needed to be made for the carrots as they will grow sideways or not at all if they encounter obstacles in the soil, which our Gillette soil readily provides. Made from a few cedar plank scraps, by my most-handy-of-husbands, Rory, we mixed heavy amounts of soil-amender in with our native dirt and came up with soft, yielding soil.  I scraped back a small amount of dirt, spread out my seeds, replaced the dirt gently and soaked the bed. I have about 50 or 60 little green sprouts as of today! The spinach was planted in rows about 12" apart, 5 to a row, These little guys took forever to sprout and they were so hard to see I almost gave up hope but I've about 5 or 6 plants sprouted today and more are coming soon I'm sure! 

The lettuce, carrots & spinach all
need to be shaded from direct sun.

My lettuce are my star performers at the moment. Since they enjoy cooler weather, and we had plenty of that in the month of May, they look just amazing. I haven't lost a-one transplant and I even direct sowed some extra seeds with a 100%+ germination rate (it was windy the day I planted and some of those almost microscopic lettuce seeds must have escaped!).

You can see the two different types
well here. And look at that color!!!

The rest of my "baby seeds", as they're called around here, will be transplanted or direct sown at the beginning of this next week so they can start taking advantage of this wonderful June sunshine!! Look for many more pictures in next week's post.


Peace,


Erin