If you've been following this blog for a while, you know that I planted a fall vegetable garden last August.
I planted just one of my 3' x 8' raised beds and in it, I grew lettuce, spinach, carrots and bunching onions. Here are links to previous posts on it: Fall garden update, Fall garden still going strong, and The fall garden lives on.
Believe it or not, I'm still harvesting from it.
However, I noticed yesterday that the 'Bordeaux' spinach is starting to go to seed now that the temperatures are really warming up. I guess it was going to happen sooner or later, but I was a little bummed to see it finally did. That meant I needed to dive into action and harvest most of it because I sure didn't want it to go to waste!
Even though there's just a half-row of it, I filled one of those huge stainless-steel bowls with pickings. What you're seeing in the photo is all of the leaves after I cleaned everything and trimmed off the stems as some of them were a bit tough. But the leaves are delectable and delicious!
I also ate one of the carrots, which was about 8" long. It wasn't the best one I've ever eaten as I discovered that growing it over the winter can affect it's growth patterns, but it still was tasty. We've been using the bunching onions in our cooking and they are great. A lot of the lettuce died during the dead of winter but a few weeks back, new leaves started coming up from the roots. I certainly never expected this bed of fall-planting veggies to go on and on, but am really pleased.
I intend to write an article on growing a fall garden in early August, when it's the perfect time to plant fall crops so stay tuned. It's my goal to start a revolution here in the Inland Northwest because I've learned that growing veggies doesn't have to stop when the frosts come. The best part of all is that there was no work involved other than planting the bed and weeding it once or twice. The only "work" I had to do was harvest and eat the veggies!
