Dinner prep

I just love vegetables, growing them and eating them.  Last night I combined fresh broccoli, two kinds of kale, and garlic, all grown in our garden, into a lovely meal with sticky rice, tofu, and an alfredo sauce.  Yum.  Here is a pic of the ingredients:

Tonight, I've picked asparagus from both asparagus beds, three types of swiss chard, and some parsley to combine in a tomato sauce based baked ziti dish.  Yum again.  I have some Italian Dolcetto wine to go along with it.  Here is a pic of the just picked goodies.

Transplants, lunch, dinner

hardening off outside

I worked in the greenhouse this morning, transplanting teensy baby plants (primarily quinoa plants and mixed salad greens) that had grown too close to each other from the April 1st planting.  To do this required washing out six packs to reuse, adding potting soil, using a dibble to prick out the little plants, and then labeling them before setting them back on the heat mat in the greenhouse.  There are some plants from earlier seedings that are ready to go out into the garden.  Here is a picture of some of them. I usually put plants out of doors for a few days to harden them off when ready.

Soon to be hardened off

One other nice thing about gardening is the ability to eat the results of our work with nature.  Yesterday, I made lunch from different salad greens and dinner from the asparagus patch and from some young beets.  Yummy!  We had the beets simply sliced into rounds and steamed, the asparagus steamed in an asparagus cooker, and quinoa, all with an alfredo sauce.
Here are pictures of the produce before the meal preparation

kale, chard, beet greens, spinach, radicchio, green  lettuce, red lettuce

asparagus, beets

The earliest of the early

Living up to the implication of its name (fast out of the gate), Derby Day cabbage sprouted today in the 6 packs they were planted in.  Here is a photo of the earliest sprout.

Another of the earliest of the early is asparagus.  Today was the day of the appearance of the earliest spear of asparagus.  Here is what it looked like.