.. experiments in winter salad gardening ..

well .. here's a couple of pictures of what the summer salad bed looked like a couple of weeks ago .. planning a year round salad bed has been a great learning curve for karen and me .. so far the bed has produced many salad bags throughout the late spring and summer months, and from all accounts people are pleased with the quality of produce that came from this lovely bed .. us, too .. although, i have to admit there is a part of me that is so looking forward to putting out five or ten times the amount of food onto ana's stand .. how wonderfull would that be .. ! ..

there was quite a bit of work done earlier on to make sure we would have salad throughout the summer .. and, for a first attempt at 'through the year' gardening, i think we've done pretty well up to this point .. although, that said, the lettuces are pretty much done for now .. we could have done at least one more plant/transplant of lettuces to keep going through the month of september .. so, live and learn .. we're already thinking of a different strategy for next summer ..

right now, though, we have our next flats of mesclun, spinach, lettuce (rouge d'hiver) and arugula growing in the greenhouse .. these ought to be ready for picking in the next week or so and the salad bags will start up again .. 

last saturday karen planted up the second succession of flats in the greenhouse .. there's quite a bit of thinking about how many flats will give us what we're looking for .. and how often these flats need to be planted to keep the harvest going through the winter months .. i daresay we'll be going through quite a few hundreds .. maybe thousands .. of seeds over the next months .. 

we also started fennel bulb seeds in the greenhouse again for transplanting outside later .. and cilantro .. which may live it's life in the greenhouse over the winter .. again, i think we could plant cilantro successively to see if it will grow throughout the winter months ..

out in salad bed #4 we have already planted peas .. little marvels which are doing very well went in three weeks ago .. and week before last mr big peas were planted, which are just starting to show themselves .. this time around they will be shelling peas .. so, here's hoping .. the peas we planted in the spring were a no show, basically .. don't know  why .. that's one of the things about gardening .. sometimes you just don't know the reasons why ..

two weeks ago we transplanted kale into one of the garden beds .. and then last week more kale was planted into a second bed .. that's a lot of kale .. it will be so great to have it, and the chard, to pick over the next while and into the spring .. there are purple sprouting broccolis planted in the salad garden, and in front of the apples .. brussel sprouts are growing beautifully for harvest later in the year .. maybe for christmas dinner .. 

this past saturday karen and i planted carrot seeds in this kale bed just to see what they might do .. they might disappear under the kales leaves, but there's nothing to lose by trying .. and, more lettuce seeds have been planted into the salad bed .. there's still lots more seeds to plant outside including spinach and asian veggies .. so, although we do have a bit of a wait until the next greens are ready, here's hoping that over the next few months we'll be able to continue eating fresh 'salad bags' from the garden .. 

keep your eyes on ana's stand! ..