salad fixings (or fixins)

this year i'm growing radishes for the first time. they are incredibly easy to grow. i sowed them directly into the garden about 6 weeks ago, and now they are big enough to harvest. the variety that i have is called 'watermelon radish' (thanks for the recommendation liz!). as you can see the color is the inverse of regular radishes.  they have a wonderfully spicy flavor - perfect for adding another dimension to salad.

i also have lots of lettuce and arugula ready to be thrown into a salad.  i brought back some arugula seed packets from my trip to italy last fall.  it's quite tasty and seems to have more of a bite to it than the arugula i get here at the grocery store.  i did initially have a problem with slugs eating the lettuce and arugula plants. i had heard that slugs can't resist beer, so i strategically placed some containers of beer around the plants. i was amazed how many slugs drowned themselves in the beer within a day or so.

swiss chard that wintered over in my garden

from seed to garden

it's been a while.  it's been a bit difficult to motivate this spring to do much to the garden or the blog.  there are the normal excuses: work has been overwhelming at times; the weather is either too gross to be outside; or it's  too nice to be doing anything but sitting in a park or hiking in the woods. i also feel overwhelmed sometimes looking at all the projects around the house and yard that i'd like to get done. it's hard to narrow the to-do-list into something that seems manageable.  but regardless, of these obstacles, i did manage to get some plants started in the basement in late winter.

i just had to keep reminding myself of the delicious bounty to come in the summer for all my early season efforts. so with that, i started my tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, & basil in february.

another thing i did was to get my soil tested.  the report came back generally good, the nutrient content and soil texture are still in the right range. the one thing that i did find out though was that the soil pH was high - 7.5.  most plants like a more acidic soil.  the sulfur content was low as well.  luckily adding sulfur to the soil brings down the pH, so it was easy to take care of both things with one effort.

the mild spring got the plants off to a strong start once. i think this is the tallest they've ever been. one thing that  also might have contributed to their height is that i put foil around the trays under the grow lights, helping to reflect more light back to the plants.