More Succession Planting

In the carrot/radish bed the latest round of radishes have sprouted up through the straw mulch.  This is my signal to plant the next row of carrots and radishes.  The first row of carrots that were planted are really starting to fill out.  They have plenty of room to grow now that the radishes have been harvested from this row.  I think this bed will look very nice by the end of the season.  The carrots should look like a wave rolling from one end of the bed to the other with the taller, more mature plants on one side and the tiny seedlings at the other.  The timing of the radish harvests are something we can keep up with better this year.  Last year I planted my radishes as one large crop and they all were ready to harvest at the same time.  This year I am able to harvest a few at a time and have them fresh with salads without being inundated with radishes, but also not running out.  It's a nice balance.

I planted the next batch of lettuce as well today, just to try to keep track of my plantings more easily.  So far I haven't been very impressed with the lettuce seeds that I planted directly into the garden.  They seem to be taking a long time to come up compared to the seeds that I started indoors late this winter.  There is a definite gap between the growth on the last of the seedlings started indoors and the sprouting of seeds in the garden.  I have made two plantings directly into the garden, one of them more than a month ago and the sprouts are just starting to put out the first true leaves.  I hope that the older starts don't bolt before the next rounds will be ready for harvest.  At this point I may just start the seeds indoors all the time and plant out when the seedlings are big enough.  It just seems like a lot of extra work, but if it makes for a steadier harvest of lettuce I might just have to do it next year.  For now I will just keep planting seeds directly into the garden this summer and keep track of my results. 

This is a lettuce seedling from seeds I planted a month ago.

 

These are lettuce plants that I started indoors months ago.  They have been harvested several times at this point and are just starting to become a little bitter.  Once they are bitter they become chicken foood.

 

Who knew gardening involved so much planning and replanning.  I guess it is all a learning process and every year things will be different from they years before.  It might depend on the weather, or how old the seeds are, or when you plant them, or how much they were watered.  This list could go on and on.  I just do my best and that usually turns out pretty well and that is just fine with me.