me&thegals, sounds lovely up there, but I don't know if I could do without my year-round gardening! I love getting fresh produce out of the garden, esp. in the winter.
Got up at 5:30 a.m. Taught French to high schoolers all day, went home and fed chickens, gathered eggs, cut a beautiful head of black seeded Simpson lettuce, pulled a couple of carrots, got a few leaves of perfect chard, made a big salad and ate it! Not a bad at all!
I received The Cook's Garden, Burpee and Baker Creek Heirloom catalogs yesterday. All are great, but the Cook's Garden is a little nicer and the Baker Creek IS A WORK OF ART!!!!
My favorite garden is the Fall garden. I have mustard greens which I am now harvesting, cabbage, black Tuscan kale, carrots, turnips, beets, chard and onions coming along. It get so hot here so quickly in summer that all my stuff seems to burn up no matter how much I water.
Get off Kingsolver's back, you Whiners! It was a great book and she very clearly explained that it was necessary to use some non-local things such as coffee, pepper, etc. Can't you just enjoy something or at least ignore if you don't like it???
Chard is much better as a cool weather crop. As earlier suggested, it may be much improved in a month or two, once cooler weather sets in. Here on the Upper Gulf Coast of Texas, I don't even plant mine until September.
I really liked THE OMNI. DIL. but was very disappointed in IN DEFENSE OF FOOD. I thought the second book was just something he dashed off to complete a contracted book. But that's just my opinion, of course. I just didn't get into it.
I don't know where you are located, but lettuce won't be good for long after it starts to bolt. It is definately a cool weather crop. I have have really good crops from a variety called RUBEN'S RED ROMAINE during the winter and Spring. Here is Southeast Texas, it is only a fall-to-spring crop.
I hate them! Used to use them sometimes but when I pulled up the plant at the end of the season, often the pot was STILL not decomposed and had hampered root growth. I now use almost exclusively soil blocks, which are GREAT! Johnny's sells several sizes and there are a lot of soil block soil...