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Potted lettuce in May |
Sunday, May 4, 2025
Everything is lush and green this time of year. The edibles are growing quickly. Salad fixings are in their prime with the summer edibles just getting started. Herbs are filling out nicely. By this time of year, we no longer need to purchase produce from the grocery store and can get fresh herbs to add to dishes that make them taste wonderful and are chock full of antioxidants.
The greens we are eating-French sorrel, spinach, dandelion greens, winter cress, arugula, chick weed, sweet clover, celery, Ruby Streaks mustard, Chinese Giant Leaf mustard, sprouting broccoli leaves, many varieties of lettuce, chard and snow peas. Many are overwintered or volunteers from last year. I also bought a few transplants from the store. I like to have new lettuces coming on all the time so there is always plenty for salads.
I have lots of volunteer Blue Feather lettuce, carrots, sprouting broccoli, Red Romaine lettuce, tomatoes, celosias and Giant Leaf mustard popping up all over the garden.
Herbs to add to dishes and salads-garlic chives, regular chives, oregano, thyme, horseradish, Egyptian walking onions, tarragon, sage, young garlic, cilantro, rosemary, parsley. All are perennials or self-sowers so they come back year after year.
The flowers that are blooming-irises, spiderwort, roses, peonies, marigolds, Sweet William, pansies, hellebores, coreopsis and petunias. The herbs and veggies going to seed-yellow flowers of the sprouting broccoli, mustard, chard and cress, yellow and pink dandelion flowers. Soon, the beautiful purple flowers of sage, the white flowers of thyme, and the white garlic chive flowers will be showing off. All veggie and herb flowers are edible. A fun way to add flavor and beauty to salads or other dishes.
The overwintering and early spring planted lettuce and spinach is beginning to bolt so soon there will be the white, yellow and blue flowers from the different kinds of lettuce. Several carrots are starting to bolt, too. If not pulled, they have beautiful white flowers resembling Queen Ann's Lace, which are in the same family, that bees love.
The lilacs have already come and gone. They and the peonies were heavy with flowers this spring.
We put in a new raised bed 4' x 8' for strawberries this spring. There are many green strawberries on the plants and the plants have really started growing. We are growing ever bearing strawberries so they will produce fruit into the summer months.
In the fall, we put in a bed for raspberries and blackberries. So far, only the wild blackberry is blooming. We also have thornless blackberry bush that is not blooming yet and 3 thornless raspberry bushes. The raspberries are ever bearing too. They will bear from June to frost.
I also transplanted blueberries into pots in the fall and added 2 more this spring. 3 of the 5 plants have little blueberries on them. I doubt we will get many berries this year, but we will get some! The 2 I added this spring are Rabbiteye-Brightwell and Tifblue. These varieties do well in our hot and humid climate. I think it is just too hot for the northern varieties for them to thrive. If your summers are hot like ours, I'd make sure the northern varieties are getting afternoon shade. Rabbiteye and southern high bush varieties do well in full sun in our hot and humid summers.
Last week, I planted bean (Yard Long, 1500 Year Old Cave, and Christmas Speckles), cucumber (Bush Champion and Beit Alpha), melon (Lemon Drop), squash (Butternut and Trombetta), Dragon's Tail Radish, marjoram, rosemary, Sweet Pickle pepper, Bull Nose sweet pepper, chervil, and wild basil seeds in the garden and pots. The tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, basil, herbs and greens that I started indoors and transplanted into pots and the garden bed a couple of weeks ago are doing well. There were a few that didn't make it that I re-seeded; many of them are up.
My husband transplanted the tomato plants I started for him into his upside down 5 gallon bucket growing system last week and they are all doing well. He wanted a very large tomato that we saw at a local nursery that I put into a very large pot. It had one tomato on it and now has 5. I did transplant a Lucid Gem tomato into the garden bed at the same time. I've been wanting to see how they do and since I had an extra from seed, decided to go ahead and plant it.
I have around 100 creeping thyme seedlings and 100 lavender seedlings going in 6 packs on the patio. I sowed seed in 6" coir pots and many more than I expected sprouted. Some of the seed packets were almost 20 years old. I'll be planting them in the new beds to deter voles and deer. They need to get a bit bigger before I transplant them. Maybe a couple more weeks of growing time outside will do the trick.
It is a good idea to wait 10 days after planting new plants before you give them much fertilizer. I'll add a diluted liquid fertilizer to all that have their first set of true leaves in the next week. I am using Neptune kelp and fish liquid fertilizer for spring feeding this year. Kelp really stimulates growth so I use it only in the spring. Also, when I transplant, I add char, worm castings and starting fertilizer to each planting hole for sustained nutrition.
It's okay to just be getting started in the edible garden with the summer lovers. You can plant a summer garden into June and still have a nice harvest.
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Volunteer Red Malabar spinach and Chinese Multicolor amaranth |
I have been harvesting the greens by taking only the outer leaves so that the plants will continue to grow. By harvesting, it stimulates the plant to grow even more leaves. If you have extra greens, besides lettuce, you can blanch and freeze them. I still have plenty left in the freezer. Preservation garden
I am doing good right now on lettuce, but will need to start transplanting some of the volunteers coming up in the yard into pots to keep the harvest going. If you don't have volunteers, it is a good idea to sow lettuce seeds now. If you start seeds every 2-3 weeks, it keeps you in lettuce all the way until winter. This time of year, start the heat tolerant varieties.
I have also moved to using greens that stay sweet during the dog days of summer to supplement lettuce. The greens I have found so far that are great lettuce and spinach substitutes in salads are Red Malabar spinach, New Zealand spinach, Perpetual Spinach chard, Chinese Multicolored amaranth, all colors of orach, Chinese Hilton cabbage (doubles as a great wrap, too), and sprouting broccoli. Keep salads going all summer long.
I overwintered New Zealand spinach in the house. I put it outside a month ago. It is doing well and has long tresses of leaves. We use their leaves just like spinach in salads. They are heat lovers with leaves that stay sweet all summer; a great spinach substitute.