Lettuce Time! -- Garden Update May 8

Yum, breakfast!

It's been hectic and crazy. The weather has been really weird the past two weeks. Last week had temperatures exceeding 90 and this week it's dropped down to 70 (we even had a freaky sun shower the other night). I specifically bought a new sheet to shade my lettuce with since it wasn't ready for the heat yet. The cloth worked and I was able to harvest at least 4 heads of lettuce total from the garden since then. All of the salad bowl variety (as pictured to the left).

DOWNSTAIRS

A close up of a future salad

Most of the lettuce out here is doing well

I'm keeping downstairs garden photos brief today as the sun causes a lot of wilting during the day. The lettuce is fine at night, but it doesn't look too pretty. The Nevada lettuce is nearly done growing and I can harvest that whenever I'm hungry. I'll need to start some new seeds to replace the harvested lettuce.

They grow up so quickly

Another good looking lettuce plant

For the other plants on the balcony, the grapevine has grabbed a hold of the support with its tendril. That means I know it's doing fine still. There are some other lettuce plants doing pretty well too in the random mess of containers along the edge of the balcony.

UPSTAIRS

I really need to harvest the last few cabbages. They've been taking up a lot of space and I want to plant other things there (if I have time). I'm trying to get new beans to germinate where the other cabbage was, but that hasn't been successful yet. I planted some new bean seeds and lettuce seeds to replace the lettuce I harvested from this bin today.

Right side balcony overview

I'm not bean boy, but the beans come out tasty.

The lettuce I harvested today is the big one in the middle

The pods on my kale plant are swelling up. All I need to do is wait for them to dry out before I collect them. When I went to the store the other day, I checked out how large the green onions they have in the store and I can safely say that the ones I have growing in my 1 gallon container are much larger than those being sold at the grocery store.

Kale Flowering

Basil and green onions

The seeds I planted to replace the peas also have yet to germinate. I'm going to give them more time, to do so.  I checked on some of the carrots and they are starting to grow some girth.

Carrots and onions

To finish off the week, here's how my biggest red chard plant is doing, along with a few of the garlic bulbs I recovered from the lettuce bin. The greens had died out, but the bulbs were still good, although small.

Almost ready to harvest!

These are no larger than a nickel.

That's all for this week. Stick around and check out last week's update or leave a comment if you like what you see or need advice starting a garden in a small space.

Last Update (April 24)