The bok choi (backround), and the broccoli (foreground) and doing great.

Likewise, the spinach and mixed greens are coming along nicely. We'll be able to enjoying the first round of the spinach crop quite soon.

Spring Sage

The sage is among the herbs that have come through from last season looking just beautiful.

I love the taste of sage... saute it in butter and serve on top of fresh pasta or pork chops - yum!

I plan to experiment a bit more with it this year....

There's a couple ideas I've found that look promising:

Fried Sage Leaves look delicious and easy to do.

Another idea is to try to create a sage pesto. My personal favorite right now is a 3/4 parsley, 1/4 basil pesto. It seems the sage could bring some pizazz to the flavor, but I'm not sure if I'd want it to be the dominant leaf.

The Chives Forest

In my ongoing quest to have too much of everything, we split up the chive plants (dug them up and sliced them apart with a spade) and re-planted them underneath the grapes.

The bed directly underneath the grapes were proving to be a challenge... last year I realized (when I accidentally dug up a root) that the grapes had become so large that their root system had spread throughout the bed (duh- out of sight, out of mind.) So that effectively takes those beds out of action. What to do? Herbs is the answer. Once planted, if the herb stays healthy there no need to disrupt that section of bed every again. It's easy access from the kitchen, so it's a good spot for them anyways. Once all the split mature, we'll have *allot* of chives.

Corn seedlings!

Planted the first squash in the 'Three Sisters' bed - a couple of starts for butternut that Amaya got as a present on her 6th birthday.

The corn seedlings have already broken through! :)

I double planted each location with Quickie Hybrid (Sugar Enhanced - 64 days); I'll thin back to just a single corn plant per position once there's a little more growth.

Bush Bean Seedling

My initial planting of of bush beans (Jade - 60 days) hasn't gone too well.

First thing - a majority of the seeds that were planted haven't germinated.

Second thing- the seedlings that have come up are pretty sad looking.

The seedling on the left is representative of what I'm getting... the leaves are a pale shade of green with yellowed tips. At this point I think the most likely reason (for both problem) is that the soil temperature

is still too low. We were having lots of warm days when I first planted, but since then we've had quite a few stretches of where the nights were in the 40's and the days haven't broken 55. The lowest temperature I've seen listed for germination is 60 degrees - but a more typical range is 65 - 85 degrees.

Beans are great companion plants with for nearly everything thanks to the fact that they create their own nitrogen, so I'll just keep planting them. I've got plenty of seeds, and I want staggered crop production anyways.