Greens, Tomatoes and Herbs

Today, Ryan and I harvested our first collard greens and kale.

We only have one plant of each item, but I feel like we can still get a good amount off each plant. I read where you can harvest the outer leaves and they will grow back three leaves every five days. Ryan was skeptical, but I reminded him of how fresh garden produce is and not to compare to grocery store produce. The stuff in the store is already a few days, if not a few weeks, old by the time

Top layer is kale, bottom layer is collard greens

it makes it to the consumer's kitchen. We can store the greens up until we have enough to make something. It should only take two, maybe three harvests.

The garden is coming along nicely. I am seeing small, green tomatoes on most of the plants. I haven't seen any on the Lemon Boys, but those are a late harvest anyway. I've seen tons of blossoms on the Black From Tula, but haven't seen any tomatoes, yet. The Early Girls are getting bigger and any day now we will have multiple fruits off that plant.

Yesterday, I ate my first tomato sandwich of the season with some Early Girls I'd let ripen by the window. I've been picking the tomatoes when they are a light orangey-red color, then I set them by a sunny window and let them redden up. It frees up the plant to put energy into other fruit this way, plus, I've heard from gardeners that tomatoes don't get anything from the plant after the white to orange stage. Either way, it's worked for me so far. They don't seem to get any bigger so, why not?

I also picked a bunch of basil yesterday, and thyme. It helps the plants to bush out and produce more this blog and enjoyed reading the writer's experiences with failing at basil. I would rather read and learn from someone else's mistakes, so I figured you would, too, since you're reading this blog. In regards to the flowers, I've been picking mine off of my basil plants, so that I can keep harvesting. I didn't realize that's what I was supposed to do, and think maybe that's why it's dying off a bit. I'll try to get rid of all the flowers and see what happens. I need to harvest much more of it so maybe it will bush out.

stems with more herbs if you cut the plants regularly. I cut the basil from the top, down, about 1&1/2 inches.  I found

I noticed that with the pineapple sage it's bushed out a bunch. I did cut a substantial amount from it a few times now, so that proves cutting down herbs encourages growth.

I've only cut some thyme, but it's grown a lot, too. The rosemary is growing tall and has a couple extra branches that weren't there before -- I started with one, single stalk.

The cilantro has begun to produce small, green seeds where the white flowers used to be. Only a few flowers have begun to turn, but I bet the rest are quick behind them. I read where you can harvest them green for one flavor, and dry them out for a completely different flavor. The plan is to try both ways and compare, then let you know the findings.