Our vegetable garden is flourishing! I did review the books on how far to space plants apart when I planted our tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, kale, and marigolds all in the same planter, but I didn’t totally trust the guidelines. This is part of the live-and-learn lesson of gardening. We have had nothing but rain and sunshine in Minneapolis, creating the perfect conditions for plant growth (aside from a few hail storms that only wrecked the lettuce a little).
This weekend we removed an entire tomato plant, two brussel sprout plants, one lettuce plant, and two out of three marigold plants I had put in all corners of the garden to ward off deer and other garden predators. It looks much better now, and yesterday my daughter found our first ripe cherry tomato!
I have been harvesting tons of red chard, kale, and lettuce since May, and absolutely love being having all this fresh produce on hand. My father-in-law actually ate some kale chips I made, and my kale salad is now my husband’s new all time favorite. (Visit my recipe site at http://web.me.com/lrschifman/recipes – it is not a blog, so if you have comments on that, leave it here.)
The spinach is finally growing. It started out very spindly-looking, but now has grown almost like a vine. This was unexpected, but it is tasty! We have way too much thyme and oregano; I’m not sure what we were thinking when we planted so many of those plants. We also have an abundance of basil, but I plan to make that into pesto.