First green salad of the year

We’ve been blessed with some nice, warm weather recently. Today was in the low 60s, although we had a few thunderstorms rumble through or nearby. The plants in the green house have been growing nicely. Their growth this time of year seems somewhat slow, but I expect that’s a result of the temperatures dropping down to or below freezing at night. It heats up nicely inside during the day when the sun shines.

This morning I watered all of the plants. We collect rainwater off of the garage roof which we use for watering. The rain fills 55-gallon barrels that sit under the eaves on one side. I don’t have any gutters on the garage at this time.

This afternoon I began thinning some of the plantings. The lettuce and spinach came up a bit thick. So, in order to promote better growth and harvests later, it’s necessary to thin them out a bit. The nice thing is that this process provides some nice tender, young greens for eating. I also picked a few leaves from those greens which didn’t need thinned in order to compile a nice salad mixture.

 
The salad included three different kinds of lettuce, spinach, turnip greens, radish greens, chard, pak choi, mustard greens, holland tyfon greens, mustard spinach komatsuma, arugula, and some garlic leaves. There were also a few small radishes I pulled.


Fresh greens in the middle of winter are certainly appreciated. They taste so good. They don’t need any salad dressing; just eat them as they are.

It was an excellent salad!