Leafy Greens

The first crop of lettuce from my (community) garden plot, picked a few weeks ago. A mesclun mix from seed and romaine from a start -- with all the rain, the lettuce has been growing like a weed!

Belchertown's NESFI is on Jackson Street, sharing property with Stone Soup Farm. I had planned on putting up more and earlier photos of the gardening site, which is a great place to try community gardening, but I've been terribly blog-lazy. The garden is inexpensive and organic, and I'm appreciating have a space in which to grow tasty red, yellow, orange, green, and purply things -- I have brussel sprouts*, eggplant*, four kinds of tomatoes, romaine lettuce, mesclun mix*, beets*, very large yellow marigolds (to keep the bugs away), zucchini, yellow summer squash, sugar snap peas, green beans, basil*, and nasturtiums*. It's all very exciting to me -- I love watching the seeds sprout and pop up through the ground and grow and eventually bear fruit. It's an amazing process, and very rewarding. Especially when you can pluck off a pea or a tomato and eat it on the spot.

I hope you have a garden this year and are enjoying it despite all the rain. At the moment I see some sun, and I'm hoping the warmth and light are reaching all my tender young plants.


*Things I've never grown before.