What we're eating out of the garden now

April lettuce and chard

Saturday, April 20, 2024

This is the time for salads.  Many salad fixings are ready to be harvested from the garden.

The first to be ready to eat in the spring are all the cold hardy veggies that survived the winter and the edible perennials that are first up in the spring.

In our garden, the overwintering veggies were carrots, celery, lettuce, sprouting broccoli, chard, cultivated dandelions, chickweed, Egyptian walking onions, garden chives, garlic chives and mustard greens.  Edible perennials that are ready to add to salads are sorrel, tarragon, thyme, oregano, winter cress leaves and flowers, and cultivated dandelion leaves and flowers.  I'm harvesting from all of these.

I gave the greens a watering with liquid fertilizer, fish emulsion, which is high in nitrogen to get them the food they need for filling out.  Greens love nitrogen and cooler weather makes it less available in the soil.  A liquid fertilizer is an easy way to get usable nitrogen to the plant.

I started more lettuce and greens seeds indoors and transplanted them outdoors into a pot on the patio.  They are about 6" high and ready to be planted in their permanent home.   The spinach and snow peas I started outdoors in large pots are going strong.  I purchased some lettuce plants 3 weeks ago that I also put in large pots outdoors.  They are forming heads.  I'm using the spinach, snow pea greens and lettuce for salads.

I have greens that perform well in hot weather so I have salads all summer.  Sprouting broccoli, Red Malabar spinach, amaranth, New Zealand spinach, sweet mustard greens, Hilton cabbage and orach leaves thrive in the hot and humid weather and are tasty in salads.

If you want instant homegrown salads, visit your local nurseries and big box stores for ready to plant lettuce, spinach, chard, and other greens.  You get an unending harvest by taking only the leaves on the outside of the plants, leaving the inner leaves growing.