One Pound of Produce

Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

It's May 19th. Our most recent threat of overnight frost passed on May17th with temperatures only getting down to about 34 degrees, here on Blue Job Mountain in New Hampshire. Meanwhile today, temperatures hit the high seventies or low eighties. That's a New England spring for you. Old Man Winter struggles fiercely to maintain control of the territory against the challenge laid down by the adolescent spring as it strengthens into its full adulthood of summer.

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.

• Click here for our harvest totals for this year

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:

1. Asparagus
2. Garden Peas
3. Mixed Lettuce
4. Spinach
5. Radishes
6. Bok Choy
7. Cucumbers (both full-sized and pickling cukes)
8. Basil
9. Red Cabbage
10. Tomatoes (just a few planted outside as yet with row covers handy)
11. Mustard Greens
12. Garlic Chives
13. Chives
14. Lemon Thyme
15. Thyme
16. Sage
17. Garlic
18. Leeks
19. Strawberries
20. Wax beans (just planted as seeds)
21. Sunflowers
22. Cilantro (Coriander)
23. Summer Squash
24. Peppermint
25. Chocolate Mint

We'll be adding a few more in the next few days as well...

 Outside of the gardens we have many other edible plants (or fungi):

1. three apples trees (7 varieties thanks to the science of grafting),
2. one peach tree (newly planted)
3. one cherry tree (newly planted) (Note: I'm aware that I need another pollinator, but haven't yet gotten around to planting another)
4.  three grape vines (one established, 2 newly planted)
5. rhubarb
6. blackberries (wild)
7. blueberries (wild)
8. wintergreen (wild)
9. occasional edible wild mushrooms
10. maple and birch trees (for sap which can be boiled down into syrup or sugar)
11. and a number of other incidental wild edibles that can be found on our 5.25 acre plot of land.  

 I haven't added these to my garden yield totals page since they do not count toward the 1000 Pound Challenge, but I think I'll make a separate total for food plants harvested outside of the garden as well.