The Vegetable Garden: Early Sowing and Harvesting

Over the weekend the temperatures were much warmer than normal; on Saturday, which reached 80 degrees, I wanted to revel in the heat, but it felt much too strange to completely enjoy it. But I did get into the vegetable garden and laid out all my rows, putting small stakes at their beginnings and ends. This is a very satisfying task, as I think ahead to the crops that will cover the ground by late summer. I then put out my small, 2 by 4 foot, coldframe and planted a row of lettuce and one of arugula in it. When the weather cooled off on Sunday afternoon, I placed a cover on it: some clear plastic sheeting stretched over a frame made of nailed together stretcher bars. The additional warmth generated in this mini greenhouse will encourage faster germination and growth of the salad greens during cooler days; I hope to be eating a salad of baby greens in 4 weeks or so.




The very first crop from the garden each spring are the new shoots of Egyptian onion, a perennial plant with delicious onion flavored leaves that I chop for soups and salads; it's cheering to be getting something green from the garden so early in the season. Later on, the leaves, which are really hollow stalks, grow taller and small onion bulblets, useful for flavoring, form at the top. Another name for Egyptian onion is Walking onion, because the stalks flop over from the weight of the bulblets, which then root in their new spot, wandering away from the main plant, which is ever prolific, ever reliable.