Monday, May 24, 2021

Harvest Monday: First Arugula

Last week we had two delicious harvests from the garden: asparagus and arugula. We also completed a lot of infrastructure work on the expanded garden.

After cutting a small handful of asparagus from the garden on Monday, I took a short walk to check on two stands of wild asparagus we'd observed in prior years and marked on our Google Maps. One had already started to fern out, but another provided 6 large stalks to round out our dinner. One of the benefits of country living - lots of farm field ditches to forage from.

single spear of asparagus amidst long grass with the caption "foraging success"

After a week of much-needed rain (right after we drug a sprinkler into the garden to water, of course), the greens in my patio garden are really starting to pop.

Bed planted within a paved patio with blooming chamomile, young herbs, looseleaf greens and small heads of lettuce

On Saturday I harvested arugula (clipping about every other plant for a row and a half to also serve as thinning out), which we mixed into a quinoa salad. My husband said, "Why don't people eat more arugula? This is delicious!" The arugula was direct seeded on April 10, so it was 42 days to the first harvest.

Bunch of arugula held in my hand

quinoa salad with arugula, feta, chickpeas, tomatoes

I have the rest of the month off of work to focus on garden prep (and other relaxing, less physical activities). On Thursday and Friday I finished moving a yard of wood chips from the back of my pickup truck to the garden paths, hilled some potatoes, did some weeding, and planted a few flowers and herbs.

Over the weekend my husband was available in the mornings to help, so we got much more done. We created 11 more 30" in-ground raised beds, bringing the total to 18 so far. We have two more left to do, probably Memorial Day weekend, but a portable greenhouse is currently in the way. Over the next week I'll be hauling more wood chips to mulch the paths, and getting these rows planted, trellis structures put up, etc. I'm hopeful this garden layout can serve us for many years, so spring prep will be a bit less intensive.

gorgeous rows of dirt

This post joins others celebrating Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Happy Acres.

1 comment:

  1. Wow - foraging for asparagus. It looks good to me! Just reading about all your work with the new beds has made me tired. I'm guessing it will all be worth it though when the veggies start rolling in.

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