No More Baby Lettuce

The lettuce harvest is in full swing. The weather has been wet and mild and perfect for it. I've harvested 7 bags. Now it's not mesclun, and they're not full heads of lettuce, the product is somewhere in between. So far the harvest has still been from thinning out the plants, so the lettuce comes in small, sweet, juicy tall clusters. (Thinking about it made me crave some, so I just got up to grab a pile from the fridge and I'm eating it like potato chips.)

It's misleading to put a price on this stuff, as is the case with so much homegrown produce. I've never bought anything that compares. Not even the CSAs I've been a member of provided me with lettuce like this. Not that the mesclun mixes and heads of lettuce were inadequate. No way! This is just one of those things that people don't sell: half-grown lettuce.

Well, like I was saying, I'm putting a price on my harvest. Organic lettuce, clumps that add up to the size of a head of "green-leaf" lettuce at the grocery store: $1.50 per bag x 7 = $10.50

I've got cracoviensis, black seeded simpson, and buttercrunch varieties that I'm harvesting right now (in that order below). 

(Quick Update... Almost)

"I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green."
-Nathaniel Hawthorne

I would like to record that as of today (May 12) I have harvested $30 worth of spinach. I actually froze a bunch a couple days ago because I couldn't eat it all fresh. I've also harvested at least one pound of lettuce just from thinning the lettuce plants! The radish harvest was brief and lovely. But there are maggots in the radishes already. Urgh. I read that you can cook and eat the radish greens, so I will try it. I'm happy that there might be something I can do with the radishes even as they are being eaten by fly larvae.

There's been a ton happening in the garden. Full update later.

I haven't been able to take any pictures for several days, but I'm going to the airport to pick up my camera - ahem! - my husband (who is returning from a much needed tromp through the Everglades to soak in some natural wonders). I'm looking forward to taking some pictures of the garden and doing some more thorough updates. I've learned a lot lately!

In the meantime, here are some two-week old shots. Time is flying by.

Earthworms love my old compost pile that never got hot. They can have it!

"You've got a little, um dandelion on your beak... um, right there."

You can eat the WHOLE THING. Cook the greens.

Chickling vetch is fixing nitrogen in my new raised bed.