Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012. |
That's great for poets, but for gardeners it can take some getting used to. Its largely a question of knowing what to plant when, and how to prepare if things look like they aren't going to go as planned. To take advantage of the early season warmth and rains, very hardy plants like radishes, lettuce, spinach, peas, and broccoli can be planted for an early season harvest.
Even before these frost-tolerant plants will be close to ready to pick, however, I have made several harvests from plants that are able to overwinter through the sub-zero temperatures and snow cover of a New England winter. These include some perennial herbs such as chives and oregano, but also a more substantial perennial vegetable: asparagus.
Asparagus is always one of the first vegetables I harvest here each spring. It is on the strength of an early harvest of asparagus that I have already reach one-tenth of one percent of my goal in the 1000 Pound Challenge (the effort to grow 1000 pounds of food for the table on less than 500 square feet of garden space). That's one pound of food on the table already this year from our garden.
I also have one row of my terraced hillside garden planted with strawberries which are just beginning to shed their flower petals and to produce fruit in earnest. I am removing all the runners as they form so that the plants put more energy into fruiting than vegetative growth.
After another round of planting today, our garden now contains the following plants:
- Asparagus
- Garden Peas
- Mixed Lettuce
- Spinach
- Radishes
- Bok Choy
- Cucumbers (both full-sized and pickling cukes)
- Basil
- Red Cabbage
- Tomatoes (just a few planted outside as yet with row covers handy)
- Mustard Greens
- Garlic Chives
- Chives
- Lemon Thyme
- Thyme
- Sage
- Garlic
- Leeks
- Strawberries
- Wax beans (just planted as seeds)
- Sunflowers
- Cilantro (Coriander)
- Summer Squash
- Peppermint
- Chocolate Mint
Outside of the gardens we have many other edible plants (or fungi):
- three apples trees (7 varieties thanks to the science of grafting),
- one peach tree (newly planted)
- one cherry tree (newly planted) (Note: I'm aware that I need another pollinator, but haven't yet gotten around to planting another)
- three grape vines (one established, 2 newly planted)
- rhubarb
- blackberries (wild)
- blueberries (wild)
- wintergreen (wild)
- occasional edible wild mushrooms
- maple and birch trees (for sap which can be boiled down into syrup or sugar)
- and a number of other incidental wild edibles that can be found on our 5.25 acre plot of land.