First Harvest!

We ate our first harvest from the garden today! It was a radish. A single, tiny, lonely radish we carefully sliced into four little pieces :-). Many of the radish's friends should be ready to pluck from the ground this weekend!

In other gardening news, we have plenty of green poking up through the soil. The spinach, peas, beans and sunflowers appear to be growing especially well. Sadly, the zucchini is nowhere to be found. (We planted the seeds over three weeks ago, so we should have sprouts by now. Right?) This past weekend we sowed our second crop of beets, carrots and lettuce. We also thinned all those cute little seedlings.

Gardening is turning out to be really fun. Our three-year-old especially enjoys helping mommy water the plants each morning. (She also enjoys digging up the plants. Yikes!)

Who Ordered This Crazy Weather???

Tonight they're forecasting frost for the third night in a row.  It's June!  Where is all this cold weather coming from?

I've diligently covered our garden each night with old sheets.  I think almost everything has survived.  The peas actually seem to be loving the cold temperatures.  Only the tomato plants look frost-bitten (and I think they'll bite the dust, sadly).  At least it's early enough in the season to try the tomatoes again. 

Here's to hoping tonight is the last we see of winter!

Say It Ain't So!

Here's to hoping our cute little sprouts don't freeze tonight.  They're predicting a chance of SNOW!  It's June, for goodness sake!  I'll definitely put our garden to bed under some comfy old sheets tonight.

Let the Sun Shine In!

The big gardening news of the day?

We have sunflower sprouts!  In one day they are already becoming HUGE (compared to our other little seedlings).  I'm curious to see how quickly they grow.  The variety we chose is supposed to reach six feet tall!

I'll need to buy some garden stakes this weekend...

Great Books for Children:

How Groundhog's Garden Grew

by Lynne Cherry

Gardening seems to be the topic of the moment around here :-).  Our family has shared much excitement this week watching tiny sprouts emerge in our backyard garden.  It's been fun and a terrific learning experience for us all.

Our family is also reading the following fantastic book:

Lynne Cherry wrote and illustrated How Groundhog's Garden Grew during several artist-in-residencies at institutions such as the Smithsonian Museum and Cornell University.  Cherry's illustrations are beautifully detailed.  Our family particularly enjoyed the pages depicting many types of sprouts!  The story "introduces children to the cycle of an entire gardening year: gathering seeds in fall; storing them in winter; planting in spring; weeding and watering in summer; and a delicious and bountiful harvest at Thanksgiving time."

I can only hope our little backyard garden grows to be as lush and green as Mr. Groundhog's ....

Green Update

This morning we found buttercrunch lettuce and tiny pea sprouts!

Hooray!

More sprouts today!  

Black seeded simpson lettuce and lots of radishes.