I’m so excited about my vegetable garden this year. I am now partnering with someone who specializes in vegetable gardens to create the best garden I’ve ever had.
Bed #1 – Lettuces
I realized that I’m not able to tend to my garden every single day, which I think is required to have a great vegetable garden. Now Anton comes to the garden everyday to check on the vegetables and that attention has made all the difference. The result: We have many more types of vegetables, as well as an insanely robust crop.
Bed #2 – ‘Silver Queen’ Corn
We’re trying corn this year! I haven’t tried to grow it in California before, so we’ll see how it turns out. I LOVE corn, being a mid-westerner, and grew up growing and enjoying delicious corn at home. I hope our experiment works out!
Box #3 – Persian and Armenian Cucumbers
We are layering vegetables to take advantage of the different seasons. While we were finishing winter vegetables, for example, we started adding starts for the spring and summer – all in my boxes at the same time.
Box #4 – Cardoon with upcoming Bush Beans
Box #5 – Jerusalem Artichokes
And we’ve added vegetables I’m not familiar with to increase the variety of food coming out of our vegetable garden. Granted, some are so unfamiliar – like Cardoon and Jerusalem artichokes – that I won’t end up using them often, but they look beautiful in my boxes and are fun to have. We’ll figure out what to do with them!
Box #6 – Tomatoes with “Genoa’ Basil and ‘French Breakfast’ Radishes
Box #7 – Kitchen Herbs
We are also paying extra attention to the health of the soil, and therefore the nutrients in our vegetables. That definitely takes time and attention, and it’s paying off. We have LOTS of earthworms and ladybugs – and things are growing beautifully.
Box #8 – Spring Onions and Radishes
Box #9 – ‘Red Detroit’ and ‘Golden’ Beets
The only hiccup I’ve had is with my beets. You’ll notice that the leaves above look awful. it turns out there is a small worm of some sort that burrows into the leaves, killing off the leaves. I saw one and it is white-ish and about a 1/4″ long. It made my beet tops impossible to use, but the beets themselves seem fine. Apparently this is happening in other Napa Valley gardens so I need to research this more…
Box #10 Garlic, ‘Kentucky Wonder’ and ‘Blue Lake’ pole beans
Box #11 – Carrots gone crazy and a few beets
We’ve started harvesting radishes, carrots, lettuces, zucchini, spring garlic, many of the kitchen herbs and the beets. They are fantastic! One thing that Anton does is harvest the vegetables a lot sooner than I used to, so we are enjoying younger, and therefore more tasty vegetables.
Box #12 – Ice Lettuce with emerging ‘Padron’ Peppers and ‘Rosa Bianca’ Eggplant
The ice lettuce above, which has very cool leaves and fullness is not tasty. But it looked great in my garden for the tour that came through my garden last month!
Box #13 – Assorted Basil which should become a multi-colored basil hedge, with time
Box #14 Shallots and ‘French Breakfast’ Radishes
I’m excited to grow shallots, to see how they work out. I’ve never tried them before. This plant is one of the benefits of working with someone new in my vegetable garden. He brings a fresh perspective with new ideas.
Box #15 – Zucchini
I can’t believe we’re already harvested 5 zucchinis as of the end of May! And they are delicious. What a treat to eat something immediately out of the garden.
This summer is going to be an awesome season for our vegetables!
