Garden harvest dinner photos of Swiss Chard greens & Radish

Some things I have been up to this week in the garden include compost mulching around plants, transplanting tomatoes, sowing more seed, and of course harvesting fresh food for dinners. I harvested blueberries, raspberries, radish and Swiss Chard today. With the Swiss Chard, I sauteed with a little water and olive oil, with garlic, salt, black pepper, sugar, and red wine vinegar. Then I sliced half of the radishes I harvested to eat raw on the side. Then I cooked some golden potatoes (not from the garden) to have with the garden food.

At the beginning of the week, I drove the truck to get compost and shoveled it around all of the plants in the garden. Because I had a truckload of compost, I was able to distribute it on two rows of potatoes growing in bags and compost over 10 rows of plants. The 10 rows consist of hugelkultur mounds in addition to rows of holes dug with compost. Digging holes and adding compost to the holes is the lazy gardener's method, and I highly recommend it! The hugelkultur mounds are also easy to maintain, and I consider them to be perfect for the gardener who don't want to use a tiller. With these rows, of course, you need to consistently mulch. In between the rows, you'll notice in the photos that I have been cardboard mulched between rows and then have a layer of leaves on the cardboard.

hugelkultur mound of Zucchini & crookneck squash

mound of crookneck squash

 Because the hugelkultur mounds tend to lose soil because of wash off, I have composted around the mounds three times so far this year from early spring to late summer. This week I have also started collecting long thick pieces of wood to contain the soil around the mounds.

Cherry tomatoes

Cucumbers (left) & Tomatoes (right)

squash & cucumber on trellis

cucumber/pumpkin/artichoke

watermelon/cucumber (right) & honeydew melon & butternut squash (left)

row of cucumber/butternut/acorn squash

 This was a picture of the mound of greens before I took out the radish, mesclun spicy mix and collards. I wanted to get the radishes out because some were splitting. And the mesclun and collars were getting eaten by beetles and worms, so I took them out to replace them soon.