Roadiepig's Fotothing

1st of a series of a few early spring garden photos...

I managed to "mud in" (my sister's term) my Chinese cabbage, broccoli, and seed onion plants at my "work" garden today. The rains have been consistent and nearly non-stop for the past few weeks, but my raised beds were just dry enough to be workable. I also planted seeds for snow peas, "bright lights" swiss chard, radish, and more Chinese cabbage.

While I was doing all of this planting, I noticed a few areas where garlic managed to slip by my harvesting last summer (I had nearly a complete crop failure due to late snow and standing water. I had around 100 sets planted in the fall of 2006, and only dug up 10 or so heads of garlic last summer). When garlic goes unharvested, you end up with clusters of undersized garlic plants the following year. They won't produce full sized cloves of garlic, so they are almost worthless.

Except.. if you dig them up early enough in the spring. If you do, you end up with sweet, flavorful sprouts that taste somewhat like garlic, somewhat like sweet onions.

So..what did I do with these surprise veggies?

I slow cooked them with the first 1015 Texas sweet onions I bought at the local Kroger on Wednesday, and then added a quart of my tomato sauce/pasta sauce from last summer, along with 1/4 pond of pre-cooked (by Lease) hamburger mixed with Italian sausage. This mix was poured over thin spaghetti to make an extremely flavorful Thursday night dinner for the two of us.

What is next for harvesting in my gardens?

The spinach that overwintered at the work beds has started growing. There isn't that much (it was an experiment), so I can't make a meal out of it.

But when I do pick the spinach, we will have a real salad for the first time in months.

If the weather continues warming up, this could be as soon as next weekend....