Yesterday I went out to pick some basil leaves to have with dinner, and I discovered a handful of Cascadian snap peas were ready to be picked!
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| Cascadian snap pea |
I'm glad the peas are ready, because it's almost time to stop picking the asparagus.
Although this week we had no shortage of asparagus:
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| lots of asparagus this week |
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| More lettuce, asparagus, strawberries and cilantro. |
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Today I harvested more peas, strawberries,
chives, cilantro, and lots of kale. |
Aside from the basil which I planted from seed this spring, everything else that I harvested this week was either a perennial that I planted in a previous year (asparagus, strawberries, chives) or a volunteer that seeded itself from plants that went to seed last year (lettuce, kale, cilantro).
This week, the
Reduce Footprints Change the World Wednesdays challenge (#CTWW) is to plant some food. I decided to plant some of the bean and squash seed that I saved from last year.
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| Black beans saved from last year, still in their pods. |
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| A mixture of beans I saved including black beans and scarlet runner beans. |
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| Butternut squash seed saved from a particularly delicious squash. |
I planted the bean seeds along the fence where the peas are now so they'll have something to climb, and I planted two kinds of squash in small hills of compost right next to the beans - sort of a modified three sisters garden minus the corn.
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| compost hill |
I encourage you to plant some food for the
Change the World Wednesdays challenge and to check out the wonderful harvests at
Daphne's Dandelions.
Elsewhere in the garden, the roses are in bloom along with foxglove, columbine, geraniums, irises, oxalis, forget-me-nots, bleeding heart, peonies, and more!
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| oxalis |
Wow ... I love the idea of perennial veggies. I knew that some herbs come up year after year but I didn't know about asparagus. And, I'm amazed that the plants which went to seed came back up. Is that typical? I can't wait to add some perennials to my garden next year ... and I might just let some of my plants go to seed and see what happens. Thanks so much for this post! Your garden is beautiful! :-)
ReplyDeleteYes, lots of plants will seed themselves. The technical word for these self-seeded plants is "volunteers" which I always find a bit funny. I almost always let my plants go to seed and collect the seed to use the next year. Usually some of it falls before I collect it, hence the volunteers. Perennials food plants are great to have in the garden. Check out the post I wrote on growing asparagus. Good luck with your garden adventures!
DeleteI love your pictures and think it is wonderful that you are saving your own seeds. For some reason that act feels so empowering to me. I have a great book on seed saving called Seed to Seed. Happy gardening!
ReplyDeleteYes, saving seeds is empowering, and it's economical too! I wish more people would give it a try. There's really no downside, and tremendous upside! I took a look at the book you mentioned. It looks great.
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