salad round one

[solarbird]

Okay! So we had salad from a few plants from the assortment I've been growing in my first ever vegetable garden. It had a lot more taste than the bag salad we usually get, and I realised after that the association I'd had with good-restaurant salad wasn't dressing related at all, it was greens-related. Plus it was super-fresh, being, well, cut off the plants about an hour before we ate it.


The garden bed

Anyway, it was pretty neat to me, I've never planted food that I've then proceeded to grow and eat. (Aside from apples from the tree at Murkworks South, but while I tended that tree a bit, I certainly didn't plant it.) Hopefully I cut the leaves down right and the three plants I cut down (leaving 2cm for growback) will indeed grow back as hoped.


Chop Chop!

It's weird how tiny the leaves look outside, then how when you get inside, they're ginormous. In that way, they're very much like the TARDIS. This confuses me, as I did not expect lettuce to be key to space-time.


We're Gonna Need a Bigger Plate

Anyway, that's a lot of fuss for just a bit of salad, but it was new to me. And tasty!

Comments

[rosepurr.livejournal.com]

Growing up eating garden veggies, I eat grocery-store greens when I have to, but it doesn't make me happy.

[starfallz.livejournal.com]

Woo, neat!

[gerimaple.livejournal.com]

this is why i want to grow lettuce. darthfrog doesn't get it, so i'm pointing him here. thanks :)

[darthfrog.livejournal.com]

Oh, I like garden-fresh veggies, no question about that. But tomatoes are, to me, the best reason to have a vegetable garden. You cannot buy a tomato that is anywhere near as good as what you can grow. Commercial tomatoes are picked green, for shipping, and artificially ripened (with ethylene gas).

[solarbird]

Tomatoes are so hard to grow here.

But honestly, why not plant both? You've got the room. And besides, greens are a cool-weather crop, tomatoes a summer. They'd ripen in alternating waves.

[darthfrog.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Geri is interested in the salad greenery goodies and I'm interested in the tomatoes & herbs. So we complement each other and, as you point out, we have the space.

[solarbird]

He's probably thinking iceberg or something. This is a greens assortment - three different kinds of plants. Very good for you! Also quite tasty.

[chipmunck.livejournal.com]

1. Did I read that this is your first 'garden' or 'salad' garden?

I'm always so happy to hear about people succesfully growing gardens- are lettuce pretty easy to grow in this area?

I manage to grow weeds well, and kill even fake plants. We did grow good pumkins for carving one year. :D Those seem easy to grow- especially with homemade compost! We are going back to doing our own composting - now that the husband has tamed our wild backyard somewhat.
anywho.

[chipmunck.livejournal.com]

I meant: IS lettuce.
I wanted to say 'Are Lettuces?' .. crud.. what is the plural of lettuce.

[solarbird]

This is my first food garden. I've had lots of plants, many of which have been edible.. Just none grown specifically for food.

are lettuces pretty easy to grow in this area?
Spellcheck accepts lettuces. And it seems pretty easy so far. ^_^ If you don't have it, there's a book you really need called Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades by Steve Solomon, though. The techniques are different here - much more like the UK than, say, anywhere else in the US. And even then, the soils are different in ways it's best to care about. It's really quite readable, and you can find it used for not very much money. (Or new doesn't hurt anything either. He updates the book occasionally.)