Garden Living; The Best Leafy Greens For The Garden

Garden Living

The Best Leafy Greens For The Garden

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Swiss Chard and Kale, and even Beet Greens

We prefer swiss chard in our Maine vegetable garden for many reasons. It is so much more desirable then spinach due to its size and much tastier then bok choy.  

1. The large leaves make it easy to harvest.  Making a full meal of spinach leaves takes an exhaustive amount of time, not so with Swiss chard or beet greens. 

2. Both kale and Swiss chard are very hardy plants and we continue harvesting these leaves into winter. 

3. Sautéed with some garlic and onion, Swiss chard is delicious and the kids are even asking for seconds. 

4. It’s a very colorful veggie choice with a rainbow assortment of stem colors making it beautiful both growing in the garden and cooked on your plate.

5. Swiss chard is packed with vitamins K, A, and C as well as magnesium, potassium, iron, and fiber. 

The nice thing about growing beets is being able to enjoy the whole plant.  We eat the beet greens when the plants are still fairly small and enjoy a nice red beet at the end. 

 Beets stain everything red, so they are a colorful option full of fiber and folate (vitamin B9).  Later on we harvest large beets; they are a sweet vegetable.

A big bowl of chopped kale ready for the pot.  One of my favorite recipes from my Portuguese family; kale soup is simple and healthy.

We decided to can the soup so that it won’t take up precious fridge space and it will be ready to share on a cool Autumn night.

Garden Living; Peas In a Pod

Garden Living; Peas In a Pod

How we grow and process our peas

Seedlings in the garden:

 

• We put up our posts and fencing first; you can also use a trellis.

• We plant 2 rows of peas, one on each side of the fence 1 inch apart and 1 inch deep.  

• Weed early to give your plants a chance to root.

Caring for the pea plants

Garden living; how to battle the elements

Garden Living

The Vegetable Garden vs. the Elements 

It was a shocker for me when Justin first said he wanted the garden... it wasn’t the garden itself, but that he wanted to devote the entire front lawn to the purpose.  He can see things in his mind and for the future where I need to physically see it to know that his ideas will work.  We transformed our rocky lawn into a beautiful and productive, well as he calls it “edible garden”.  This produce is enjoyed all year as we have been canning, freezing, and storing it all in our extra refrigerator.  

The Strategy for the Battle

 Veggies Vs. The Elements

To win the season long battle against the elements, it is important to start from the beginning and get a good watering system in place.  We’ve always used a sprinkler for the early weeks of the garden, but Justin only engineered this elevated sprinkler last season and it has worked so well, reaching even the furthest corners.  Bonus: we have the compost right there to keep our soil rich in minerals.

Plant your seeds in spaced out rows.  This makes it easier to hoe or rototill large sections of the garden.  It leaves hand picking only to right beside your plants.

You can see there is also plenty of room to scoot your bench or kneel along the space between the rows for hand picking those weeds.  We’ve got peas here on the left and beets on the right; usually we pick these early and enjoy beet greens.

Here is a close up of the peas; they do best with a wire fence to “climb” as they grow. I have been working on this section getting those weeds out while they are still little.  As the weeds grow and you pull them, they are more likely to disturb your plants.  Right now, we’ve been pulling out as many rocks as weeds, reminding me of when we first started. Due to a plumbing issue, we had to dig out a whole section last summer, causing a significant disruption to the soil.

The tomato plants also do better with some support.  The tomatoes get heavy and pull down on the branches so having the metal tomato cages helps.  Sometimes we also put hay down under them to cushion the growing tomatoes that reach the ground.

Cucumbers and Marigolds.  We plant our garden with some strategies to win against the elements and that includes the insects.  It’s no fun to spend months caring for your cucumber plants to find they’ve been ravaged by squash bugs.  Marigolds help repel these bad little bugs.  We’ve also found that squash plants attract them (obvious, right?), so by planting our squash in a separate patch, we are limiting the exposure of our more fragile cucumber plants.

Potato plants need a little mounding of more dirt every few weeks to keep them well covered.  This is an ongoing battle against erosion, but easily won with the right amount of effort.