Went down to the garden today after work. It was glorious, these first days of spring with the honest sweat on my forehead and the rich smell of dirt. I have hopped down twice since my last post, stealing a half hour or so each time. AJ and I exchanged greetings - he's a new gardener, but I know him from long ago, another place and time. He was concerned about whether he would be too late getting in his peas. The plot he inherited was quite a mess. It had been abandoned last year by a gardener who had health problems. AJ was thinking that just preparing it for planting would keep him occupied for quite some time. He despaired a bit of getting a harvest until late in the season. I told him that's what radishes were for.

I assured him that it was a gardener's nature to feel behind - I had sworn that I would get my peas in earlier -  but that he should be encouraged to know that one of the best windows of planting was between August 1 and September 15. Last year we brought the salad and roasted vegetables to Thanksgiving dinner, fresh from the garden and the result of late summer planting.

That brings me to the photo I closed my last post with. It was planted at the end of September, it will be my first harvest. It's mache, or corn salad, a green common in Europe, but less well known here. I met a farmer from Columbia County last year, who grew it in her winter hoophouse. She said she sold it to the chefs in NYC for $30 a lb. 

The garden has given me some pleasant surprises already. Arugula and mizuna that I kept under row covers all winter long have emerged alive in the spring and ready to go. Onions that I planted for a fall crop of scallions never quite got it together for fall, but seem to have overwintered fine in the open garden. I am hoping for nice scallions by the middle of May. And today I noticed a small radicchio plant that somehow made it through, I will pamper it and see if its inclination will be to go to seed or make a head. I don't know if it is from a seed that did not germinate last fall or some piece of plant that survived the snows.

Since my last post I planted another flight of spinach (variety unknown) the radish 'Champion,' escarole 'Broad-leafed Batavian' and kohlrabi 'Purple Vienna.' All of them were planted in blocks, rather than rows, on 4/14. It will be interesting to compare production of Spinach under the two circumstances, my first Spinach crop was planted in three tightly spaced rows. I think that first crop of spinach is just coming up, the lettuce certainly is. The peas, well, with the peas I was a bit impatient. I dug about in one of the rows until I found a pea seed. I had to find out how they were doing. It had sent out its first long root, the one that settles down before the shoot reaches up to the light. When it reaches 60 or 70 on Friday afternoon, my peas will be out soaking up the rays!