Green and Growing

Here's a quick peek at garden progress. It's coming along! The inside seedlings are slowly but surely getting bigger; the cool-weather ones are ready to go out as soon as I harden them off a bit, while the others (tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, etc.) have a while to wait yet. (Last frost date is around June 1.)

Outside, I put in a whole row of asparagus crowns. Hooray, perennials at last! I've been waiting a long while to be settled enough to plant asparagus, since it takes several years to get established. It's growing like crazy - each day when I look at the skinny little spears, I swear they've shot up another several inches.












I also planted peas and fava beans a while back - their instructions say "as soon as the soil can be worked in spring," so I went for it. They didn't do anything for a long time in the cool, dry soil, but it finally rained and they've sprouted. There are all sorts of other things coming up, too, that I didn't plant. So far, to my delight, I've spotted parsley, chives, and mint, a lovely mound of lemon balm, and a whole row (why on earth?) of giant sage plants that I thought were dead but are now resurrected. There's also a row of onions, presumably planted in the fall, and a bunch of volunteer sunflowers and, I think, arugula sprouting between the rows.

The latest round of planting included a bunch of greens (spinach, sorrel, cress, arugula, mustard) and some radishes and turnips - I'm just seeing the first signs of them poking up. Next will be transplanting the lettuce, chard, broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale, cabbage, and collards that I've been tending inside. Oh, why do these tiny, green, growing things just make me want to jump around with glee?