Harvesting the first of the spring lettuce.

Spring mix of lettuces and spinach.



I've been cutting the first of the spring lettuce in my garden.  Oak leaf, baby romaine, deer tongue, bibb and red leaf lettuces are all growing in a colorful mix along with some mint, sage, chives, and parsley in my raised herb bed.  The leaves of the lettuce are very soft and tender and very delicate in flavor.  The lettuce I cut this evening will grow back in a few weeks and be stronger in both flavor and leaf structure. Hopefully I'll get at least two more cuttings before I need to pull these plants and sew something else - probably beets.

Creeping Charlie flowers.

I also weeded out the strawberry bed - again.  I weeded it once about six weeks ago and then let it go. The strawberry plants are getting pretty big, blooming and setting little tiny berries. Creeping charlie, chickweed and several other weeds whose names I don't know had taken up residence in the bed, crowding the berry plants and it was time weed them out.  By far the worst infestation was the creeping charlie.  This weed sports very pretty vivid blue flowers.  I hated to pull out all those pretty flowers, but it was going to make it impossible to put straw down in the  bed to keep the strawberries up off the dirt where the slugs and earth would destroy the fruit. It was also robbing the strawberry plants of vital nutrients and space to grow and expand. They had to go.

The management of my strawberry bed made me think about the strategy of the upcoming political campaigns.  My strawberry plants are like a politician's followers.  They are perennial but need to be cultivated and cared for regularly.  When you leave them alone too long, weeds start to take them over. They may be pretty weeds but they will undermine your ultimate goal, which is picking delicious fruit. You can let the weeds go just so long before they begin to crowd out your strawberry plants. So, tonight all the creeping charlie and the chickweed and other weeds went on to the compost pile.  Now I need to find some straw and use it to put down a thick mulch to cradle the fruit high above the dirt.