Due to a very cold winter and soil that warmed extra-slow this spring, the garden is running about a week behind last year.  That means our garlic isn't quite ready to dig yet, but we still have four pounds left from last year, so I'm not terribly concerned.

I harvested broccoli a week late too.  We'd been eating broccoli nearly every day since last Tuesday, but the majority of the heads were suddenly in need of picking early this week.  Since I decided to ditch the shelling peas this spring and plant broccoli in their place, I ended up with so many heads that they barely fit in my basket.  2.75 gallons of broccoli now in the freezer!

This week also heralded the beginning of the year's roots.  I pulled some new potatoes from early beds planted just for that purpose and also thinned out part of a carrot bed, saving the fingerling carrots to go in chicken soup.  I plant my carrots thick on purpose since the seeds sometimes don't germinate evenly, and since I like being able to harvest little carrots early without using up my main crop.  The carrots left behind will now have room to grow big and sweet.

Despite the slow spring crops, it looks like our summer vegetables might be ahead of schedule thanks to judicious quick hoop use.  I think this cucumber is going to be ready within the week!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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