Photo Update (March 3 Garden Project)

Here’s what’s happening in the garden lately:

Baby carrots!

This beautiful swiss chard plant is a rogue. We didn’t actually plant it, it just popped up next to one of our potato boxes and it is just too beautiful to cut down. There have been quite a few of these self-starters in our garden this year, apparently a result of our “semi-professional” composting techniques. Seems not everything in the compost is breaking down and we are likely spreading viable seeds when we spread compost. We’ll improve…and in the meantime, the self-starters are entertaining and depending on their choice of location, we leave some of them.

I’m pretty excited about this Zephyr squash plant. I first had Zephyr squash grilled at my friend Jenny and Bob’s farm a few years back and they were delicious! The plants are very prolific so we’ll have tons of this in our summer meals and they always remind me of that wonderful trip to Harvest Moon Farm. Send me your squash recipes!

I came back to the garden recently having seen the documentary Queen of the Sun and although I’m not quite ready to say we need to start a bee hive, I did feel like it is important to attract bees to our little food-producing plot. Ellen pointed to a bunch of scraggly looking things she’d just pulled out of the front yard and told me they were bee balm, a flower that bees love. I dutifully planted these castoffs in the backyard and now they’re looking gorgeous! I know the bees are digging them, but do you think I could get one to land in my picture while I waited?! Nope. You’ll have to use your imagination!

Speaking of bugs, wow, look at this prehistoric thing! This shell is hanging under one of our garlic leaves. Not for long though. As you see, the leaves are browning, which means it’s time to pull the garlic and dry them!