Complete Salad

For years...since the first veggies I planted in Chicago in 2004 to be exact...I have desired to grow sufficient vegetables that I could have one complete salad all grown at home. In addition to growing several different kinds of vegetables, this required all of the vegetables to ripen at the same time. It finally happened! My first complete salad: red leaf lettuce, snap peas, cucumbers, and a yellow carrot. You can see the joy on my face as well as Mr. Salad's.

Bad blogger eats veggies

I'm such a bad blogger! My apologies to all of my devoted fans out there (including those of you I had to remind to read this)! Perhaps I've just been too busy in the garden? Here's what's new:

1) Snap peas are AWESOME! The longer you leave them on the plant the fatter and sweeter they get.

2) The broccoli is producing little florets, but they are very loose and go to flower very quickly. All the web chatter says this makes for inedible, bitter broccoli but Shelby tried some last night and said it was tasty, flowers and all.

3) Lettuce is still kicking, in fact finally producing fuller more compact heads just like real lettuce you buy in the store!

4) Strawberries ripen every few days or so but some critter keeps chewing them off. I got one full plump one tonight.

5) Raspberries, feared to be completely overwhelming, are amazing. They taste like store-bought with added sugar. Yum!

On the flipside...

-Cucumbers never showed up. I planted plants around the fourth of July and they look like they're going to bear fruit. Added some zucchini also.

-Carrots look great but are growing slowly and are all tangled in each other because I didn't thin them (I was overzealous). I'm banking on survival of the fittest to kill the little ones and let the big ones grow straight, but I'm going to let them grow another month if possible.

-Peppers, left in their starts too long, seem to have gotten stunted because they're not growing even now that they're in yummy compost. Oh well. Next year!

So, vegetables are doing great! I've also been busy landscaping and building the deck but those will be posts for other days...stay tuned.

Lettuce

Today I harvested my first head of lettuce. It was great! I grew it from seeds planted in late April. The lettuce was slightly more bitter and dare I say more flavorful than lettuce I get in the store. Much to my surprise, there was only one bug on the whole head and not that much dirt. I think the midnight slug attack from a few weeks ago paid off - the lettuce had been chewed in and out and through by the slimy nocturnal creatures so in one weekend I initiated every slug attack I had heard of:

1) Go out with a headlamp in the dark and pick them off (Eeew. Between the lettuce and the dahlias I got about 50.).
2) Put coffee grounds around the base of the plant (thanks to the barista at Victrola who gave me a whole bag).
3) Sprinkle eggshells around the base of the plant (no, they don't smell like rotten eggs).
4) (I was actually too lazy for this one...) Put a cupful of beer half deep in the soil and let them clamour to the "bar" and get drunk and die. Poor suckers don't know when to say when.
5) Apply Sluggo to the soil. Now, Sluggo is not labeled as organic but every organic-friendly garden store sells it. Technically it's made from iron phosphate which "occurs naturally in the soil." When slugs eat it, they feel full and stop eating so they starve to death. (more information here)

Frankly, I think #5 was the one that did the trick. The others look nice and organic and are much more natural than the Sluggo option, but the darn stuff really seems to work. Next time maybe I'll try random assignment of slug control mechanism, but for now I'm happy to have a home-grown salad.