Sunday, March 28, 2010

Spring Garden check up

I went out today to check and see what was happening in the garden plot. The garden had been under almost 2 ft of snow for most of the winter and I'd left behind some cloves of garlic and quite a few parsnips that I didn't have time to harvest. Well I saw that the parsnips were starting to grow tops again so now was the perfect time to harvest them when I could see where they were all hiding.  This is what I got from the garden.



Yep that's a LOT of parsnips for two people, but we started out right tonight by cutting up the smallest ones and roasted them up tonight for dinner. Here is the link for a really good recipe for Roasted Parsnips.  Some will last quite a while in the fridge, but I'll probably have to freeze some also. On top of all that, I actually left some in the garden. Some were quite small and those were left to grow large enough to be worth eating. There was one more really large one that I left for the purpose of setting seeds. parsnips won't set seeds until the second year, so if you want to harvest and save them, you have to leave a few in the ground for a second growing year.

I also found that the garlic cloves had started growing. I separated out the cloves into individual bulbs and transplanted them in rows. I'll have quite a bit of garlic to harvest this fall if most of them produce. I also dug up and hoed and weeded and raked and cleaned out the rest of the garden and decided it was time to plant some of the early vegetables that can handle the cooler weather. So in went some beets, carrots, spinach and kale. Tomorrow I'm going to finish off planting cabbage, and Swiss chard. 

I'm really excited to see the garden grow this year. Who else has a garden?

3 comments:

  1. That is so cool!! I did not realise you could winter over root veggies that way! I am not much of a gardener but I love fresh produce I may have to start.

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  2. Parsnips are actually a better tasting vegetable if they are exposed to freezes and heavy frosts before harvesting. They are extremely cold hardy and easy to grow.

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  3. Oh and Garlic grows better bulbs if you let them winter over as well.

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