Saturday Market Report: Link Up! plus a garden update

As usual, here's your opportunity to share your local farmers' market with the rest of us. Miss Chef and I are taking a break this morning--phew! (but I do have a garden update after the box!)

Who went to market this weekend?


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Garden Update

I was just telling Miss Chef earlier today how proud I am of our little garden this year. Somehow, amidst all the craziness, we actually got things planted more-or-less on time, and have kept the worst of the weeds at bay. We even did a second planting of radishes, carrots, beets and beans. (We only second-planted the beans because most of the first bunch never sprouted.)

This is the last picture I posted, from April 23rd (whoo-whee, has it really been that long ago?):

And here it is today:
Look at those peas go! I've already started picking small handfuls, and there's a nice crop that should come ripe in the next day or so. I accidentally left the soaker hose on for about 4 hours Friday night, so they've got lots of pea-plumping moisture to work with!

Those big leafy things along the right edge are our broccoli plants. The two ends of that "row" are covered by the soaker hose, but the middle is not. Water makes a big, big difference! At any rate, that may be our next crop to come in:

Aw, isn't that cute! And that's another reason I'm proud of myself: I finally got around to spraying the broccoli with Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), to kill the cabbage moths that have been eating large holes in the leaves. In fact, after reading the label, I found that Bt is good (or bad) for lots of garden pests, including tomato hornworms. And, since I'd seen the white moths flittering around the radishes, peas and herb garden, I just sprayed everything. I even went around front and sprayed our cedar bush that's been infested by bagworms.

Speaking of tomatoes, you can finally see them!

That's a pretty common 1 1/2-gallon watering can in the back, to give you some perspective. They're not huge, but considering we started them from seed, they do look pretty big to me!

Here's another crop we're pretty excited about this year. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to take pictures while these were in full bloom; they were covered by adorably striking white flowers. Can you tell what they're turning into?

Berries! I think this is a raspberry plant; Miss Chef put in several blackberry, raspberry and blueberry plants last year. The blueberries haven't been doing so well, but the raspberries have really taken off. Since they only fruit on old growth, this is the first time we run a chance of getting a big enough harvest to really play with. Last year we'd get two or three ripe at a time, and they were positively amazing.

Memory Lane: When I was growing up in the wooded countryside of northeastern Ohio, part of my learning was memorizing where all the good black raspberry patches were. I remember donning jeans in the heat of August, tying a bucket to a belt loop, and wading into chest-high thickets, stretching to snatch every last berry within arms' reach. The dog would accompany us, and she became very adept at nipping off all the ripe berries at nose-level. Only the ripe ones, mind you! She was even more thorough than we were.

Hopefully, this little briar patch will be a bit easier to pick out, at least this year. Though I doubt putting on a long pair of denims is going to be any more enjoyable in a Carolina June than it was in an Ohio August.