An overview of the kitchen garden in the late afternoon on FEB 15, 2014. Because this garden is now a “going concern” in that several items have a present and/or future harvest, I am blogging this by date of photos. In summary of the first few months of this garden:- The soil in this circumscribed patch, about 215 square feet, was replaced down to one foot deep, to be able to grow plants without lead.
- Lots of plants sprouted quickly, but seem to have been eaten by bugs. The plants did better even in the cold beginnings of the new year. It has been rather cold until now, when I was able to tend to it without my jacket.
- I am able to harvest lettuce, radishes, parsley, cilantro, oregano, and the mixed greens of mesclun mix. I will get small harvests of beets, carrots, broccoli, sorrel (one plant), marjoram.
- I may get some red and white cabbage, sage.
- It looks like a garden.
- Some plants, such as lettuce and parsley can be harvested from the outer edges of the plants, leaving the centers to continue to produce.
- Other plants, such as radishes, carrots and beets, are pulled up in their entirety, and the soil is left bare.
- To fill in these bare places left by either harvesting, or poor initial growth, I am simply going to re-dig the garden in patches, amend the soil with potting soil, topsoil, and/ or compost, as I get it, and plant something else which promises to grow in the coming months.
- I have already started doing so, and therefore I am going to write about this garden by the date, not time after planting, because parts of it will be at different stages at any given time.
Tag Archives: Cilantro
Garden, 10th Week After Planting
View of garden, some things grow better
Best radish with slightly swollen stem
Best parsley showing speeded up growth
New lettuce seedlings. All others disappeared
. 
Best cilantro, growing better
Some plants are starting to take off! As you see the garden is shaded by the houses a lot, because we are getting close to the winter solstice. Nine more weeks from now there will be more light than we have right now. The light will begin increasing in 4 1/2 weeks at the winter solstice, and it is our experience that in general things in the yard slowly begin to grow at that time such as clover and grass. Maybe parts of the garden will grow better again.
It seems that caterpillar season is over. I did not see any crawling today, although the temperature on the font porch was over 70 degrees. The beets and carrots have been eaten off to the ground. There are some new leaves of lettuce coming up. It has been apparently eaten off several times, but a few new seedlings are popping up, yet again. Time will tell.
For sure we will have a few herbs to harvest as needed for our kitchen in a few weeks!
Garden 9th Week After Planting
The green on the left is radishes, And that on the right is cilantro and parsley.
Radishes. The taller variety grows better. 
A little Mesclun Mix is in the front.
The lettuce has disappeared again. I think caterpillars ate it.
After fertilizing, frequent watering, letting in a little more light, and removing the tent-caterpillared mulberry leaves, the garden is doing a little better.
We have a little less than 10 weeks to have the garden get yet darker, and the light again.