rhubarb!

in the hoophouse

The spinach is almost ready to pick! Lovely tender delicious and nutritious baby leaves...can't wait!
Also seeded in the hoophouse: lettuce for a fast crop of baby spring mix, arugula, radishes for harvest before the tomatoes go in for the summer....potatoes in the black pots for early new potato salad...yum!

sowing seeds in the greenhouse

Looking out to the garden from the seed starting greenhouse. So much going on in here these days!....I continue to sow cabbages, broccolis, cauliflowers, kales..... Cute little kales just beginning to germinate....
These little cabbage seedlings will start going outside soon....

the apple trees

The apple trees are happy now. Dave came over to prune them a few days ago. He's a master pruner extraordinaire! He loves the trees and does such a good job. They're beginning to come alive with green now....

daffodil bouquets

I've been making the first garden flower arrangements of the season lately....spring has sprung and things are getting busy! These bouquets were sold at Happy Tides last week and I'm making more this week. Daffodils, star magnolia branches with big fat buds that are beginning to open into white flowers, alder branches with new bright green leaf buds, salal, juncus and often, whatever else I might find around the garden...I'm going to go now and cut some branches from the sour cherry tree and force them to bloom in the greenhouse...they look lovely with daffodils too.

tuscan kale

One of my favourite things about growing some of my own food is that we get to eat things that aren't sold in the grocery stores or markets...delicacies like the tender and delicious kale flower buds that appear on my tuscan kale plants at this time of year. Here's today's harvest for tonight's dinner....yum!Black Tuscan Kale has become my favourite kale to grow (and eat) and here where I garden, kale seeds can be sown indoors now and the small plants can be planted out in April. It's a very decorative plant and I think it looks beautiful planted in a flower bed. It does really well in containers too. If you have space in a veggie garden, grow a row for tender leaves in the summer, sweet super-green leaves in the fall and winter and in the early spring, these delicious and beautiful flower bud sprigs! I think the leaves are so beautiful that I add them to floral arrangements too.
The seeds are sold at West Coast Seeds where it's called lacinato kale.
I must remember to leave a few of the flower buds to bloom so they'll produce some seed since this is an open-pollinated variety and I like to save some seeds every year....