It is officially summer! My last day of work was yesterday. There are many great perks to being a teacher - but summers off is definitely towards the top of my list, and I hope to use this time to my advantage! That means more time for weeding, replanting, watering, and (hopefully) posting! It is hard to believe it is the end of June. I feel like I just posted, but it was over a month ago! My goal, is to post over the summer at least once every week. You heard it everyone - now make me stick to it! And while we are talking about goals, let me just mention that Barney has challenged me to grow 1,000 pounds of food the season. One. Thousand. Pounds.
So far, we have been off to a good start in meeting that goal. As work was winding down, the garden has been exploding. Each of our green beds (3 five by five raised beds) has been producing steadily. We have already harvested about 14 lbs of greens from the garden. 14 lbs of leaves is A LOT of leaves. The majority of this is Arugula and Red Romaine Leaf Lettuce which naturally reseeded itself from last year, and Spinach. We have, however, also included in this total some Swiss Chard and Kale. Currently, our first round of arugula, red romaine and spinach is going to seed (tear), but our other greens are absolutely stunning. Did you know that greens could be stunning? The swiss chard is growing in a rainbow of colored stems and its large broad leaves are deeply savoyed. Our bib lettuce is growing in actual heads that make me beam with pride. Our kale is getting taller by the day and I am excited to announce that I have officially managed to grow Toscano/Dinosaur Kale. This has been a failure of mine for the past 2 years, and I just ate my first leaves from them last week! Yay!