Moon in Cancer, waxing

One of the nice things about planting by the moon cycles is that when I notice a planting day, it pulls me out of procrastination mode (perhaps spending too much time with the computer), and into getting things done in the garden mode.  This was the case yesterday as the moon is waxing, it is in a water sign (Cancer), and so it is theoretically a good day to plant upward growing crops.  I took advantage and planted 3 types of spinach in the concrete bed I constructed last year (varieties planted: Corvair from Johnny's Seeds, Bordeaux, a red veined variety from Territorial, and Oriental Giant from Renee's Garden).
I also planted a tray of 6 packs (that is 8 of them).  I used mostly 3 cells in each 6 pack for each variety with one seed in each cell.  Lettuces planted included greenleaf Black Seeded Simpson, red butterhead Skyphos, green butterhead Dancine, red Grand Rapids type Vulcan, green butterhead Victoria, red loose leaf New Red Fire, and iceberg Summertime.  I also planted broccolis Belstar, Packman, and Apollo, pac choi Win-Win, and oriental green Tah Tsai.
I also weeded the asparagus bed which is still producing well, and weeded the tomato patch in the hothouse.  I pulled out a tomato that had overwintered but was not growing well, and left a volunteer Stupice tomato, a potato leaved variety in its place.  All in all a great non-procrastinating day.

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