Baby's All Grown Up!

Remember my tiny Red Russian Kale sprout?

It's all grown up and ready to eat!

We harvested some this week.  I couldn't resist clipping a few leaves and eating them right away.  How much fresher can you get than that?  It tasted amazing!!!  I will probably try to make some sort of salad with it.  I need to start coming up with some ideas because I have enough kale in our garden right now to feed an army!  We have the Red Russian as well as Italian!  

I am so pleased with how our garden is turning out!  I honestly was not expecting these radiant results from our very first year.  We've been told by a few other gardeners that it's difficult to start things from seeds in the soil at the community garden.  Many of the other plot owners bought seedlings and plants.  Their crops were towering over ours for the longest time and it was difficult not to have a little bit of garden envy.  My mouth still waters when I look at the plot right next to ours that is bursting with collards.  It's no longer an issue now because I can simply harvest some of my own delicious greens!  I am already plotting another roundfor the fall and collards will definitely be one of them.  We put in some organic heirloom tomatoes, some eggplants, peppers and some strawberries in the past few weeks.  These were all purchased from the farmers market.  So many of the vendors had seedlings for sale that they were difficult to resist.  I'd also like to plant some squash and maybe some onions if it's still seasonable to do so.  I think it would be awesome to throw together a ratatouille from homegrown veggies!  

Carley, one of the farmers at the market, told me that if we were able to grow things this year then we should be set because it's been difficult at her farm.  We've had a LOT of rain this week and we're forecasted to have lots more next week as well so hopefully that won't put to much of a damper on things.  The sunshine that's predicted for this weekend should help.  It's also supposed to be pretty warm so that will dry things up.  Chris tilled in a bunch of organic compost (chicken manure) that we got from our friends Shannon and Eliezer.  I still laugh at the look on my husband's face as he carried that sack of crap from the car.  You would have think he had pure gold in that bag, he was so excited!  It's so nice to have finally found something to really do together and to bond over.  We were looking for something new to take on and this has really been perfect.