Another Garden Update

Here is the current news on the vegetable garden. I'm still (as of yesterday) enjoying mustard greens, and have been eating them frequently for a few months now. The first harvest was probably sometime in November, but the plants have grown (and continue to grow) so well that it looks like they haven't even been touched. (Or maybe there were just so many to begin with.) In any case, the greens are delicious. I don't know if my seed will be good when the next planting time arrives, but it may not matter since I noticed a few of the plants are about to bolt.

The broccoli was also a success this year. I think it tasted as good as broccoli possibly can, which is delicious. But I have even more good news about it. I found an uncommon recommendation that broccoli can be successfully grown if the transplants are placed with an in row spacing of 4 to 6 inches. By comparison, it is easy to read elsewhere and find 12 to 15 inches as the recommendation. The smaller spacing was interesting to me because the garden is so small and I like broccoli so much. The bottom line is I planted with the 4 to 6 inch spacing and each plant produced a flower cluster of good size. I had 9 plants total.

Another interesting fact from this season is that I used no fertilizer, with the exception of some compost at planting time and the usual year-round garbage. Again the bottom line is that each plant produced more than I could eat. If all that was in spite of not applying extra fertilizer, then that's even better.

The plants will meet their end sometime, but it appears that it won't be due to cold weather. I have already seen temperatures cold enough to freeze the water in the dog's water bowl. The plants did appear damaged on those mornings, but it was only appearance. Once the day warmed the mustard greens, broccoli and lettuce appeared normal and still tasted good.