Day 39

   The spring veggies SFG box on Day 39.  As you can see, I've been eating the radishes and they are almost all gone.  I will be planting something else in these two squares soon.  Although I've had a side salad or a meal-size salad made with greens from the two Mesclun salad mix squares for every meal for the past two days, it's hardly noticeable in the way those two squares look -- they look really full.  It is so nice to have easy and continual access to fresh, organically-grown vegetables.  I have not seen any pest in the garden and nothing has had any holes either. ^_^

   One square I have yet to start harvesting is the Swiss chard square.  They are just not getting to be between 5 and 8 inches tall (The tallest is the orange one, and the shortest is the magenta one.) and I'm going to let them grow a little bigger before I'll start taking the outer leaves for me. ^_^  They sure are beautiful!!

   Also beautiful are the pea plants with their light grey-green leaves and elegant tendrils.  The tallest one in the crowd, among my "Alaska" peas, measured 24 inches today.  And I noticed some flower buds starting to show. :D  Exciting!

Little Mushrooms

   I found a tiny surprise this morning when I was checking the SFG boxes.  Right in an "Alaska" peas shade were two little mushrooms.  They are about 1.5 inches.  As much attention as I pay to these boxes, I doubt that I missed them yesterday, so they must have come up overnight.   My area is very dry, so we don't see a lot of mushrooms unless in the mountains or in the shade after a rainstorm.  The soil mix for SFG must be doing an excellent job keeping things moist.  These are the only two I've found.

   Aside from their tiny stature making them look undeniably cute, I think they are beautiful.  The texture of their tops reminds me of ribbed sweater.

   I removed the soil around the roots of the radish to see how they are coming along. ^_^  Bright red!  Still a little small, but they're definitely getting there.

   Something else that is getting colorful in my spring veggies SFG box is the "Neon Lights" Swiss chard.  In the SFG book, Mel recommended 4 Swiss chard plants per square, so I planted about 4 to 5 seeds per spot, hoping that I'll be able to get one of each color that was in the mix -- red, pink, yellow, and orange.  When they germinated, the red and pink/magenta seedlings look almost identical and so did the yellow and orange babies.  So I waited until a pair of true leaves grew.  By then, the oranges looked a little darker than the yellow guys and the red ones looked more intense than the pink/magenta ones, helping me identify and thin according to desired color.  They are about 3 to 3.5 inches tall right now.  Clockwise from lower left: yellow, orange, red, and magenta/pink.