The Family Garden: Spring Clean-out

I am one for long good-byes.

It is always an interesting decision-- when to pull up one plant to make room for the next. With the limited space, I want to try to use as much as possible. Usually this is easy with the seasons, but due to excessive heat last summer, the tomatoes decided to produce as the weather got cooler, and convinced me that they deserved to stay even though their yield was lousy over the summer.

The last batch of tomatoes we took was not tasty, however, and so it was time to say good-bye.

The lettuce is still doing well, and we have taken five to six dinner salads off of it for each of the last two weeks.

The parsely is presently excessive, and Deanna decided to help with that some, as we will see in a bit.

Taking all of what's left, there are a few tomatoes and peppers, along with some parsley.

Then we pulled up the plants. I tried to show Zachary how to knock the soil off the roots. "We don't want to throw away the dirt, son..." How often do you hear that from a parent?

Then we worked on the dandelions and cold weather weeds. This is Zack's favorite: digging in the dirt and looking for earthworms. But really we are both preparing soil for future planting.

On the other side of the garden, the greens are flourishing. Sammy has already eaten some cooked swiss chard, and now he is trying to scale the garden wall to get some more. He was almost successful on his own...