Garden Update July

The BRl had its first harvest this morning! The radishes and chard had a great growth spurt over the last week so we picked some of the Cherry Belle radishes and snipped a few leaves of chard. Even though we planted our seeds close together and didn’t thin out the young plants, the Cherry Belle’s were big and round and very spicy! They give a nice zest to a salad of greens--including our chard--or on a sandwich, sliced thin.

All of the seeds we planted at the Community Garden site are from our free seed supply at the Library. Some of you have asked about the “packed for” dates on the back of the seeds. Lake Valley, who is our supplier, has responded that the germination rate goes down about 3-5% for every year after the guaranteed date stamped on the packets. Our Cherry Belle’s were stamped 2017, and we have a great crop! The chard was stamped for 2018, and again, very robust.

As we harvest our radishes, we will re-sow this coming week for an August crop. We will also sow more chard for summer salads. A small scissors works really well for snipping the chard leaves, which will keep producing as long as you keep harvesting. This week we will also transplant pepper plants that were started by our fellow librarian Christy after a few days acclimating to the summer sun. We’ll check on the tomatoes and get the beets thinned, too.

Please let us know how your own gardens are coming along!