Garden Share Collective – spades, spatulas & spoons

This post is part of the Garden Share Collective. Each month a group of dedicated bloggers and gardeners share stories of adventures in their vegetable gardens. The gardens are from around the globe so you get a snapshot of what is happening in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, from snowy winter to spring to late summer. Click on the link above to visit the gardens.

The last month has been busy and I haven’t had much time to work in the garden. Consequently, some things have bolted before I had a chance to harvest them. Now everything seems to be ready at once. I certainly won’t have to visit the produce market much this month, we will all be very healthy from all the leafy greens.

What am I harvesting?

Chard – all colors
Tuscan kale
Beets and beet greens (more greens than beets)
Herbs – rosemary, thyme, parsley, cilantro, mint, and nepitella (from Italy, Calamintha nepeta which tastes like a cross between oregano and mint)
Broccoli raab
Handful of snap peas (they never made it out of the garden)
Lettuce of all kinds
The first asparagus
Baby cauliflower and broccoli Romenesco – more on that later in the post
Meyer lemons

Rainbow Chard

Dino Kale – Tuscan Kale

Beets – more greens than beets

Rosemary in flower

Broccoli raab

Snap peas

First asparagus stalk

Broccoli Romanesco

Meyer Lemon

Meyer Lemons

The heads of the broccoli and cauliflower never made it past two inches in diameter. Some research tuned up the probable reason. We have had an unusually warm winter and both of them (especially the heirloom varieties I planted) need a certain amount of winter chill. The plants are healthy and huge but have not produced a crop. I’ll leave them until later in the month, then I will be pulling out the plants from that raised bed to make way for the first summer vegetables. I’ve heard that the leaves from the plants are delicious and will make good use of them.

The lettuce is starting to bolt. I’ll be planting more this month.

This plant is called a tree collard. Supposedly it grows to six feet in height and produces wonderful edible collard leaves. Mine is only about eight inches tall to date, I purchased it at a seed exchange in mid February. You propagate it by stem cuttings and a gentleman was selling them at a rock bottom price.

Tree Collard

Planting and chores for March:

direct sowing of lettuce and arugula
beets
radishes
carrots
parsley
add compost to everything
pull out and compost anything that is past its prime
cut down the fava beans, chop them up, and compost them back into the soil
harvest, harvest, harvest

Spring is definitely here early this year.

Borage in bloom

Thank you for visiting.

This is my first post to share with the Garden Share Collective, a group of bloggers and vegetable gardeners from around the world. It’s organized by Lizzie who writes the blog “Strayed from the Table“.

If you are new to my blog, let me introduce myself. I garden on a small side yard on the edge of urban Oakland. I have four raised beds as well as a standard vegetable patch. I battle deer, squirrels, and our cat who loves anything green. Getting enough sun is a big problem as there are large trees on every side. But, I manage to grow enough organic vegetables and herbs to supplement what I buy at the farmer’s market. My garden feeds my family, friends, and neighbors.

Oakland garden

We’ve finally had some rain in Northern California, more is expected later this week. It has been such a dry year and I’ve struggled to keep my vegetable garden going while conserving water. The garden is beginning to slow for the winter, the lettuces seeded in late September are only an inch tall. They may not be big enough to gather till next year. I plan to seed some small radishes this month. If the warmish weather holds, they may mature before our first cold snap, fingers crossed.

I’m harvesting chard, the first of the broccoli, and salad greens including both lettuce and a few leaves from the fava beans. I’ve dug the first of the Jeruslem artichokes. Because they are so invasive here (I have direct experience with that woe), I planted a few tubers in a large container. However, maybe because I was so stingy with water (?), there aren’t very many artichoke tubers. Not to worry, I will dig them out of where I orignially planted them several years ago, in the middle of the garden. They are extremely happy there, unfortunately.

: Chard

: Chard, lettuce and perrenial arugula

: Broccoli

: Sprouting broccoli

: Fava beans

: Lettuce

: Arugula

: Jeruslem artichokes

I’ve planted radishes and carrots in containers on my back deck. The radishes are ready for harvest. I don’t think they got quite enough sun, sigh. This one looks good though. Hopefully the carrots will pull through. I have terrible luck with carrots.