Working on the Garden

This week I ran over to my friends to work on our cooperative garden. While she cooked dinner, her three children and I went to work with a hoe and pulling weeds. Surprisingly it was time to harvest a few things already. The kids and I stood eating fresh green beans right off the plants, we pulled a few small radishes that were a bit crowded and also pulled the last of the lettuce.

The lettuce we planted was a variety mix and one of them is so hot it’ll peal your pants off! We were guessing that it may have been related to the horseradish family. Talk about clear out your sinuses.
There are some roma tomatoes almost ready to pick (next day or two) and the rest of the plants are loaded with fruit. We are going to have so much canning to do. I could make out the very beginnings of the broccoli nestled in its leaves and the heads of cabbage are about the size of a child’s fist.

The cucumbers and various squash plants are enormous and full of fading flowers. The dill, fennel are looking good but something is eating the basil. The onion tops are looking strong and tall.

A few weeks in, we covered all the isleways with newspaper and then covered that with a nice covering of straw. That has made all the difference in the weeds.