What are these things?

Just today I noticed these small green egg clumps(?) at the base of my cabbage leaves. My cabbage just started forming heads about a week ago. There isn't any harm to them at this time (just a few little holes munched in some of the open leaves), but I don't want to just let these things sit there if they are going to hatch into an army of pests. Searched the web... didn't find anything. I don't know if it is related or not, but some wasps have been hanging out in the same area of the cabbage... maybe eating these things?

Bolting and Harvest

Over the last two weeks a great deal of bolting has occured in the garden. Almost two weeks ago the spinach started to go. By the end of that week, even the newly sprouted baby spinach was trying to set seed. The buttercrunch lettuce bolted last week and the bibb lettuce 2 days ago. The Bok Choi was on a similar schedule to the spinach. The heat has definitely picked up. I don't know if it was that, or if I missed watering too many days while at work. Either way, yesterday would have done them in with our 100 degree heat. I pulled up quite a few heads of each. It is so sad to see it go to waste. I left a few in place for seed collection.


On the up side, I harvested the larger of my two cauliflower yesterday. We ate it with steak dinner. Yum!




Amaranth is finally growing... apparently it likes the heat. I now have 4" tall plants with 3-4 true sets of leaves each. The final attempt at direct sowing also seemed to work... they are starting to show a set of true leaves. Next year I will winter sow and keep in cointainers, then can put in the place of other salad greens as those bolt. They definitely don't need to take up space in the garden before then.




I have one lone purple carrot sprout. I will try more soon in containers.

The bush beans are showing flowers. Now that the bak choi is out of that area, I wish I had planted twice as many beans... is it too late?

June Photos

The salad bed just keeps on growing. I've been taking the outer leaves of the lettuce heads several times now and they just keep looking great. The swiss chard has finally gotten a break from whatever pest was mining through its leaves. Now they are looking like really healthy plants. I don't even know what to do with all the spinach. A couple of them have gotten to be over a foot tall with huge leaves. Will they still be good eating or should I chop them down to make room for the babies? Who knows.
One of the Cauliflowers has become a mammoth of greens, but the small white head has just started forming. The other one is even smaller in both aspects.


This Red Sunflower has a cute little curl in it.

Peppers, Tomatoes and Tomatillos are showing their first signs of flowering!



Overall, things are looking pretty good. I still need to finish staking or caging the tomatoes. I am pushing it later than I should, but hopefully won't cause too much damage because of it.

Partaking from the garden, finally!

This week we have had multiple salads from the garden: spinach, bibb lettuce, and buttercrunch lettuce. Buttercrunch is a definite favorite. Spinach isn't bad, but I think I need to keep looking for the perfect variety.

Stir fried bak choi with ginger and garlic was pretty good, but a little bitter. Jared loved it because it brought back memories of Indonesian meals (bitterness and all). Tonight I steamed swiss chard and poured peanut sauce over it. The peanut sauce definitely helped since I am still getting used to steamed (aka wilted) leaves. Growing up that was never something I ate. While I was cooking I tried a few nibbles of the swiss chard fresh... I was shocked at how salty it was. Who would've guessed?

The most exciting eating thus far has been the few sugar snap peas that we have munched on. Yum! Next year I will plant at least twice as many of those for sure!