Wow, have I ever been delinquent in writing posts. Okay, so it’s only been a day and a half, but the minutes, hours, and days seem to keep flying by. I’m having a hard time fitting in blog posts this spring! But enough complaining about my busy schedule… (Nor will I bore you with the philosophical argument over whether or not to include an exclamation point in the title of this post.)

Moving on…we harvested the first salad greens from the garden yesterday. It is exactly this reason that I think I’m an advocate for starting lettuce inside and transplanting it. We planted 4 week old transplants on March 23rd, and on April 20th, they looked like this:

Yum! Absolutely gorgeous lettuce! In contrast, the lettuce that we seeded on March 23rd, is about 2 inches tall. It will be tasty, yes, but not for another few weeks. Anything that gets me some veggies earlier in the spring is a good thing in my book. We harvested about 12 “heads” of lettuce, with another 20 or so to harvest next week. (They would probably last longer, but they are taking up space that the tomatoes go in.)

We also had to thin many of the Asian mustards, and we saved the little seedlings for delectable “microgreen” salads. The third thing ready to harvest yesterday was the ‘Hong Vit’ Leaf Radish. This is in our Asian garden, and the leaves taste a lot like radishes. Unfortunately, our mild weather means they aren’t too spicy. Maybe that’s a good thing?

The leaf radish is in the front. It’s kind of hard to see, but they have brilliant pink stems and veins. In the lower right corner of the picture are some of the young mustard greens. Gotta love the first salads of spring!