First harvest of the year

Yay! I harvested the very first of my container garden today. Just a salad made of thinnings from my big dish of radishes and some baby spinach, but still good! Only about 10 minutes from growing to served up. All I did was pull up any of the baby radishes that were too close together, break off the root end and wash them well. The baby spinach I pulled larger leaves off all my plants. I need to plant more spinach, I eat a ton of salads and fresh right off the plant is so much better than the junk at the grocery store! There's something primal and intensely satisfying about eating something you grew yourself, even if it's just a little salad!

I added half a chopped up roasted chicken breast on top of the salad and a little light ranch and made lunch of it. Yum :D

On a related note, I think the potting soil I'm using has too much nitrogen. The root veggies don't seem to be getting plump roots, just lots of greens. My baby carrots should have some thickening by now, but nothing. Same with the radishes. At least the radish greens are edible (and yummy!) but the carrots may be a flop. Worst case scenario I toss them to the worms and start over with some garden soil or some plain ol' dirt. Until then - my greenery stuff is all doing really well!

My garden today

It's a bit overcast today and getting ready to rain. Seemed like a good time to document some progress in my container garden!

This big dish planter was a freebie! I filled it with cheap potting soil that was on sale, and dropped a bunch of rainbow radish seeds on top. Spread a little more dirt over the top of those about 10 days ago. Look at 'em go already! I also have several small flower pots of different types of radishes in the house, planted at the same time, but these ones outdoors are growing much faster. I'll probably move my small pots outside after the rain, it may freeze at night the next few days.

Here's my giant strawberry pot, another freebie! I followed a tip I found to drill holes in a 1 inch pipe and put that down the center of the pot to help distribute water better. We'll see how it works as the plants grow. I filled it up with some super cheap bare root strawberries, the ones on top seem to be perking back up but the lower ones are mostly wilted. I've watered them directly a few times, I think it's just that I planted the ones with bulky roots on top, and small roots on the side where the holes were smaller. I'm hoping they thrive, but if they don't I'll have plenty of edible flower sprouts I can poke in there instead! I have an entire tray of pansies, violas and johnny-jump-ups sprouting.

There's more on the front patio, sprouting indoors and on the other deck, but I'll cover those another day! Fun to watch things grow!