Design

It's been a lot of fun to have decent beets.  Our mountain raised beds (filled with compost) are ideal;  I've never managed to have much luck growing beets in the piedmont, even with heavily amended soil. But we've been enjoying beets (and onions and garlic from the piedmont vegetable beds) -- hard not to like freshly harvested beets and their greens.  Yum.  Here are two views of the same bunch, directly after harvest (hmm, and just prior to being part of our dinner). beets, onions, and garlic beets, fresh from the garden

I sowed more seeds this evening.  It's exceptionally warm in the mountains, with teasingly warm soil.  I'm quite sure it's too soon to sow beets and carrots (I did anyway), but an Asian green from Burpee  (Senposai, a cool-sounding hybrid between cabbage and mustard spinach-Komatsuna) might do well, along with a Japanese turnip variety from a local seed company ( Sow True ) called Shogoin. My spinach, peas, and chard have all emerged, but I was chastened by seeing an extremely productive bed of overwintered chard and spinach near the local whole foods/organic market.  Yikes, the spinach leaves were giant (uh, thanks to 10-10-10?) and the chard looked big, too, for this time of year,  And this was just in a small front-yard veggie garden.  Hmm.    Or maybe they just hadn't harvested the spinach, so that's the reason for the big leaves....or it's some enormous-leaved spinach variety?

I've been delighted to have robust-looking beets growing in my raised beds in the mountains.  I definitely haven't been successful growing beets before.  They need neutral soil, a deep bed for the roots to develop, and plenty of moisture, not always easy to provide in the acidic soils of the Piedmont, where I've been growing most of our vegetables. So, I'm happy to have harvested a few 'first' beets, two 'regular' and one golden. They were delicious!

I harvested the first tomato of the summer today. Admittedly, it was small (a Sweet Million) from the earliest planted tomatoes in the large raised bed here in the mountains. But all of the tomatoes are growing vigorously, and I'm training them into their cages, supports, or spirals! More exciting, to me, is that I've got beets developing plump roots (!) That vegetable compost with composted cow manure must be good stuff. I've not had any luck with beets before, so I'm thrilled. Not to mention how robust the chard is looking (and it's quite delicious, too).

After I finished two more stone beds this morning (below our small mountain house), my gardening companion filled them with soil. They're yet to be planted, but I worked on the previous four beds this afternoon. Planting new beds is fun. An afternoon trip to a local nursery snagged herbs, a couple of Cherokee Purple tomato plants, a Sweet Million cherry tomato, and seedling leeks. Added to the flat of lettuces that I'd brought up from Clemson, and along with radish, beet, and chard seeds, among others, I'm set for now. And waiting for the weather to warm up!