Hello garden gals and guys!

I hope you enjoyed this past weekend as much as I did.  Yeah, it rained a little bit here and there, but mostly it was perfect get outdoors weather.  Cool enough to enjoy an outing with some friends and get a little work done in the yard. 

Now…let’s talk salad, shall we? 

If you keep up with the news, you know that romaine lettuce was recalled because of e-coli.  When these outbreaks happen during the growing season, I don’t worry.  That’s one of the many benefits of growing your own food.

But when they happen outside of Maryland’s growing season? Yeah, I panic just a little.

I hope there are no more recalls on greens, but even if there are, I’m ready for them.

You know why?

Yup!

My salad garden. 

It’s coming along quite nicely.  So nice, in fact, that this weekend I pulled out some containers I had and hung them inside the garden.  Then I planted rosemary, cilantro, and sage in them.

Now having a salad is as easy as walking out into my little backyard farm.  You can’t get more fresh than that! 

Here’s a picture of the deliciousness growin’ on right now:

Are you ready for a close-up? Here’s the rosemary:
And here are the cilantro, with sage nestled in between them: 

And doggone if I didn’t get my first harvest of salad greens yesterday.  There’s some arugula, spinach and buttercrunch lettuce.  Yummy!
Did you know that you can harvest buttercrunch lettuce leaves individually? Yup.  You can wait and harvest the entire head, but then you only get to enjoy it once.  I want to make my homegrown goodness last, so I just cut the outer leaves when I want to enjoy a salad.  This way I can enjoy my lettuce for at least two months (or  until the warmer weather makes the it bolt).  
Next up are two short, but sweet, videos.  The first is how to harvest buttercrunch lettuce. 
And this one’s on how to harvest arugula:
That’s it for now garden gals and guys!  Until next time….
Happy farming!