Harvest!

Well I did it. I ventured out into the 20 degree chill, opened the cold frames and harvested a salad for later today. It was 30 degrees inside the frames and the leaves were borderline frozen when I harvested them. I hope that doesn't ruin my plan for a nice taste of summer on the first weekend of spring. Anyway I harvested...

1. Chives from a six inch pot inside on a southern windowsill
2. Beet leaves from a 12 inch pot that has 5 beets in it. I took most of the usable leaves leaving about three young leaves per beet
3. Spinach - two full plants left over from a fall planting. They are small, but much bigger than any of the seedlings I have planted this year.
4. Romaine Lettuce - two small heads from seedlings started inside in Jan and planted outside in early March.

I can probably build two more salads of the same size and ingredients before I have wiped out the first seedlings of my succession plan. At this point it is hard for me to imagine the second wave of lettuce/spinach/beets will be harvestable (I love making up words) when the first wave is spent. There will probably be a long lapse between this salad and the next.

I will finish out the salad with some dried cranberries and nuts of some variety. Can't wait.

PM update: The salad turned out great. We each had a small one.

Later in the day we did some minor garden duties. Mainly I hauled two truckloads of rock (from the torn out herb planter) to my friend's "clean fill wanted pile". Then I built two Pea climbing apparati. One in the sun garden and one in the tepee garden. I used natural logs from various trees that I have cut down over the years. In each section, I built a frame with two posts and a crossbar. The peas will climb twine hanging down from the cross bar. Another pea popped up in the sun garden - makes two total. We haven't had any material rain yet this spring, so I filled the compost tea barrel with water from the hose.

Sarah spent a good deal of time outside while I watched the Pitt game. She helped load the rocks and watered all our new grass and various plantings.