Everything is Growing Beautifully in My New Vegetable Garden
My large new vegetable garden is so much fun to visit right now because of all the growing produce - there’s something new popping up every day.
This garden, which we started planting in April, is filled with so many wonderful crops - tomatoes, spinach, brassicas, carrots, beets, Swiss chard, sweet and hot peppers, onions, leeks, shallots, potatoes, artichokes, asparagus, all sorts of herbs, and more. I've already picked a few lettuces and cabbages, and every one has been delicious. We always plant in succession, meaning we seed crops at intervals of seven to 21 days in order to maintain a consistent supply of harvestable produce throughout the season. I can't wait for our first big bounty.
Enjoy these photos.
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- What a difference a couple of months make. This garden is looking so beautiful. And I love that it is so close to my Winter House. It’s nice to be able to see all the crops we’ve planted over the last several weeks – they are all thriving.
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- In one of the first beds is our spinach. Look at all the spinach we’re growing this year. The leaves are so beautiful and so very tender and tasty. So great for my morning green juice.
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- At the edge of all the beds, we planted herbs. This is thyme. Thyme is an herb whose small leaves grow on clusters of thin stems. It is a Mediterranean herb with dietary, medicinal, and ornamental uses. It is delicious with fish or poultry and imparts a lemony flavor.
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- These are the leaves of our artichokes. Globe artichokes, Cynara scolymus, are popular in both Europe and the United States. Artichokes are actually the flower buds, which will emerge from the center of the plants.
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- Artichoke plant leaves are silvery-green in color with long, arching shapes. The plant stems are thick and fleshy.
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- Swiss chard is a leafy green vegetable often used in Mediterranean cooking. The leaf stalks are large and vary in color, usually white, yellow, or red. The leaf blade can be green or reddish in color.
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- We always plant a variety of carrots in all the different colors – red, yellow, white, purple, black, and orange. They’re not ready yet, but the tops are lush and green. And, do you know… the first carrots were white, purple and yellow – not orange. The Dutch developed orange carrots in the 1500s. All modern-day orange carrots are directly descended from these Dutch-bred carrots.
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- In the first long center bed we planted asparagus. We won’t be harvesting these for at least three years as asparagus needs all that time to develop, but after that they will produce an abundant crop of spears spring after spring.
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- Our cabbages are also growing nicely. To get the best health benefits from cabbage, it’s good to include all three varieties into the diet – Savoy, red, and green. Savoy cabbage leaves are ruffled and a bit yellowish in color.
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- Red, or purple, cabbage is often used raw for salads and coleslaw. It contains 10-times more vitamin-A and twice as much iron as green cabbage.
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- And here is one of our green cabbages – so perfect.
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- Broccoli is a hardy vegetable of the cabbage family that is high in vitamins A and D. And, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, USDA, the average American eats more than four-pounds of broccoli a year.
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- Here, we picked the center head of broccoli. These are the smaller side shoots that are already growing so beautifully.
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- Kale or leaf cabbage is a group of vegetable cultivars within the plant species Brassica oleracea. They have purple or green leaves, in which the central leaves do not form a head.
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- We planted leeks, shallots and onions back in late April – look how much these leeks have grown. The leek is a cultivar of Allium ampeloprasum, the broadleaf wild leek. The edible part of the plant is a bundle of leaf sheaths that is sometimes erroneously called a stem or stalk. Leeks have a mildly sweet flavor similar to onions, shallots, garlic, and chives.
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- In another center bed, along this trellis we put up, are lots of peas – one section for shelling peas, which need to be removed from their pods before eating, and another for edible pods, which can be eaten whole, such as our snap peas. They are best grown on supports to keep them off the ground and away from pests and diseases.
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- Pea plants produce white flowers with a slight pink hue.
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- There is also a lot of fresh and fragrant cilantro. Often known in the United Kingdom as coriander, cilantro comes from the plant Coriandrum sativum. In the United States, the leaves of the plant are referred to as cilantro and the seeds are called coriander. Cilantro is also commonly known as Chinese parsley. And those who care for it and those who don’t are split – and it’s actually genetic. Some possess a gene that makes them super-sensitive to the aldehyde component found in cilantro. Do you love cilantro, or hate it?
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- Also always growing here at the farm is parsley. This will find its way into my morning green juice. Parsley is rich in vitamins K, C, and other antioxidants. It has a bright, herbaceous, and slightly bitter taste.
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- This is curly parsley. This comes from the same family, but curly parsley leaves are thicker and ruffled. Some also say its flavor is a bit stronger in curly parsley than in the flat-leaf varieties.
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- Everyone always asks what I do with all the vegetables I grow. I share them with my family, but I also love sharing the bounties with friends, colleagues, and my hardworking crew here at the farm. I also provide fruits, vegetables, and eggs for photography and video shoots. And, of course, all my birds get vegetables too. I hope your gardens are doing well this season.
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