Our faithful spinach was showing signs of the end of it's life so I pulled it up last week. Now remember I planted something like nine spinach plants... and my advice to anyone harvesting large amounts of spinach is, "only harvest and deal with one plant at a time!" I love growing greens, but it is work getting them from grown to plate. I was up late at night dealing with this pile of spinach...
But I'm not complaining. I am grateful for the spinach God gave us... pretty much for free. But I need to document the ridiculousness that is this pile of spinach so that I can remember next year to pull up one plant at a time. I started washing the spinach in the sink, but it ended up in the bath tub because I had so much... it was a mess. I wanted to just go to bed, but I also wanted to get it put up in the freezer before it wilted. Lesson learned! And now we have spinach for pizzas & casseroles for the next two or three months.
We also harvested the carrots and some radishes this weekend. The radishes are pretty straight forward for me. I've grown them before, they don't take long to grow, and they are very satisfying... just not to eat. I did try one after I harvested it and, yes, I still don't like radishes. I gave them to friend at church. We have a few more that aren't big enough to pull up yet and Steven wants those, so I'll leave them for him.
The carrots were a first for me. And while I don't think it's necessarily cost effective to grow your own carrots, they were fun and I think I will continue to do a few each year for fun and practice. It was kinda interesting because the carrot tops I thought were for sure done produced crazy looking carrots. The tops I thought weren't even close were some of the best looking carrots. I need to do some more reading on it, but I think getting right there in the dirt is really the best way to learn.
Here's our harvest. I cooked the carrots for John and he's eating them today. There was only about 1/2 a sandwich bag full of carrots after I got them cleaned, but that's just the perfect amount for a growing toddler.
Texas is crazy. We only just put our first stuff in the ground yesterday. I don't feel like we are that much more north than you guys but i guess we are.
ReplyDeleteYeah, we can pretty much grow something year round. The only off months are July, August & January. If it's not those months then there is something on my planting schedule that could be planted. I look at it as a way to make up for being so hot in the summer!
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