Main Beds all mulched in.

Bean beds with trellis supports

closer side view of bean beds

one of the first snow peas of the year

Raspberries going hog wild!

some leaves and grass clippings laid out for the mower to mix and chop for mulching.

the finished product

I hope to have more pictures soon this was towards the beginning of last week, Maybe some plant closeups and whatnot. Need to get the actual camera out though for better quality pics.

We eat a lot more vegetables raw, too, because sometimes I run out of time to get them all washed, chopped & stir fried. Especially if we have evening meetings and I've returned home late from work. Raw is good, but lightly stir fried is my favorite and they all taste good together as long as I don't have too much of any one plant.

I prefer to get out early in the morning to pick before I leave for the day, but that doesn't always happen if it's rainy & cold. Come summer I'm home all day & it's much easier to harvest weekdays.

Speaking of easy: help the harvester or help yourself harvest easier by being prepared with harvest baskets & tools.

I keep a small flat bottomed vinyl coated wire basket with kid scissor under the sink ready to snip salad ingredients or herbs. Another larger one with larger scissors for my hubby. The handles make it easier to hang on to & snip to fill them. A bowl just didn't work for me unless I had a 2nd person to help hold it all steady.

I also keep a few stainless steel knives in a crock under a small plastic side table out there in case I forget to bring one with me from the drawer when harvesting cucumbers, zucchini, broccoli, etc. that need to be cut with a knife. I also have a chair there with a bucket nearby, so I can sit down to snip off more waste parts before taking into the house like rhubarb leaves, outer cabbage growth, etc. I often find slugs or bugs there between those leaves that I'd rather not take inside.

Those things work great to save time & steps back and forth when preparing meals.

If my harvest is larger than the baskets I'll use my cell phone to call someone inside the house to bring a laundry basket out to carry it in. Those work great to rinse off on the lawn & then carry in after shaking off the water or even bring a clean bath towel out to wrap around plants to carry inside.

I have even used a pillowcase in a pinch and it works as long as I don't overfill. We wash again inside to make sure the vegetables don't have any hitchhiking bugs or slugs. That turns off the non-gardener in the house quickly. I try to do my job to keep the dirt & bugs outside as much as possible especially in the early days of gardening when we were used to prewashed produce from stores.

Second hand stores have these baskets & single steak knives fairly inexpensively, so you don't have to buy a $40 wooden trug if you don't want to. Plus the baskets work well for the first few rinses or sink soaks then greens go into the salad spinner once no more bugs.

Hope that helps~ Enjoy your harvests!
Corrine

Romanesco Broccoli

Mesculine mix - planted too late I think

Spinach - bad germination rate and also planted too late.

Choiga Beets - These were thinned once and seem to be doing ok, if a little bit behind.

Potatoes - The star of the garden so far. Need to hill a second time already.

Onions - I started indoors but they didn't transplant very well. They don't really seem to be growing at all. Though I did just recently mulch them for the first time.

3 varieties of eggplant in the front row, and 5 different hot peppers behind them. These were bought at a store, all the rest save 2 tomato plants were started by seed.

Carrots - need to be thinned soon, planted a little late, but they should do ok once I thin them.

Bell peppers - started indoors, going to try this black plastic mulch, the other peppers had just a grass clipping and chopped leaves mulch to see which does better.

Stupice on the left, Dagma's Perfection on the right.

San Marzano Redorta on the left, Chocolate Stripes on the right. These are the best two looking tomato rows.

Planted about a week after the previous two, the left row is italian heirloom, the right row starts with two cherokee puples from the store, then three homer fikes yellow oxhearts (my worst starts) and then finally one more san marzano redorta, just because I plan on canning a lot.

This is the final tomato bed and was yet another week behind the previous bed. The first 4 were filled with screened topsoil I had brought in, the last two were hand screened by your truly through a 1 inch screen from a pile of topsoil I had saved from a porch project last year. Anyways, on the left, Giant Belgium, the bottom 3 on the right are super sweet 100's the right top 3 are sungold. Still need to get some mulch down in this bed.

Here is a size difference shot from the cherokee purple from the store, to my absolute worst transplant, a homer fikes. I want to see if my transplant will catch it.

Some summertime iceberg starting to form heads.

Full row shot of the iceberg, cuciburts on the backside of the mound.

Top is butternut squash bottom is muskmelon. Will have a trellis for all the vining climbers I planted on the bottom row of this thing.

Densuke watermelon on top, Ashley cukes on the bottom.

Adapazari squash from Jim, a member of these forums on top, and the bottom is two batches of troboncano zucchini, the left were transplants, the right was direct sown. Obviously the tromb's do well as transplants.

Fairytale pumpkins on top, more tromb's on the bottom.

Insuk's Wang Kong, also from Jim, on the left, An italian heirloom pole bean from a co-worker on the right.

A standard scarlet runner bean on the left, and what I think are Fagiolo di Cuneo on the right. They were given to me unlabeled but last year we sort of identified them here on the forums.

Avalanche snow peas in full production mode.

Getting to pick about 50 pods like this every day.

Raspberries are soon to be red, I'll do another update when they are, might only be another week though.

New trellis for the Zukes, cukes and melons.

Tromboncano Zuke, climbing up to about 6 ft already.

A root node starting, I just pulled the long vine up to the trellis and zip tied it in place, There were several of these little roots starting along the main vine.

Here is one of the first little baby zukes.

A very nice looking head of iceberg from the same bed.

A long view of the two front beds.

Picture of the florida weave on some chocolate stripes.

Some early Stupice toms starting to come out.

Some early Cherokee Purples. These were the store bought ones so I don't think it's a great sign that I have early toms on this plant. It hasn't grown much since palnting out a couple weeks ago, but it still looks nice and healthy, hopefully the top growth starts back up pretty soon.

First Raddishes of the season.

CH