MAY your garden grow!

So what's up in your garden? What's just starting to poke its little green neck out?

I wanted to post pictures, but it's chilly and wet today, so you'll have to use your imagination -- I'll post the French names, too...just as a vocabulary lesson.

I have red and green oakleaf lettuce (laitue feuilles du chene, rouge et vert) - my seedlings are finally beginning to come into their own, and the storebought ones are going strong

Moneymaker tomatoes (tomates) It took them a week or so to adjust to a transplant, but all seems to be good from here out.

Cucumbers(concombres) -- the first little leaves just appeared today!

Broccoli (um...broccoli!) waiting. We've had a spell of chilly weather, so I hope the broccoli enjoys it.

Garden Peas (petits pois) -- I can barely see their necks...but I'll have pea plants soon! I LOVE peas!

Jalapenos (piments forts -- literally strong peppers!) getting bigger

Bell peppers (poivroins) like the jalapenos, they've slowed down with the cool weather, but so far, so good.

Basil doesn't care for chilly grey days any more than I do...it's biding its time.

Pumpkins (citrouilles, as they're for jack o'lanterns...if they were the eating kind, they'd be potiron) Jumped out of the ground and have never looked back. I may seriously have to trellis them to the tall stone wall next to the SFG...they are growing fast enough that it could be taken as a threat to take over the whole back yard.

Radishes (radis) will be ready to harvest in another week to ten days. When I thinned, I had an empty box adjacent, so I stuck them in the ground...so I now have TWO squares of radishes coming on strong. (Rolaids, anyone?) (looks like a radish)

Carrots (carottes) thought they weren't going to sprout, when they started to pop up...I'm behind on carottes, but we'll catch up.

Ooh. And potatoes. I planted Charlottes in three white contractor sacks with good potting soil (like Mirjam on another post, I ran out of vermiculite, and I really don't need another 100 litres of the stuff)...the front of the bag says that it's got manure, peat, and compost...so it's at least in the right general vicinity. I have two more bags, and 10 more chits, so I may end up with 5 potato bags before it's all over. My best friend from Georgia is the daughter of a potato farmer...so she's very interested to see how the bags work. She has no yard at all...so we'll see...maybe she can find a corner of her balcony for a potato bag. (No we haven't figured out how GRITS...Girls Raised In The South...come to live in France...!)

And am waiting impatiently to plant corn (Mais), charentais melon, and a watermelon (pasteque) The weather needs to be a lot warmer than it is today!

oh how I would love to be able to grow pasteque... but in Holland the season is just a bit too short for them. Luckily for me, they're widely available for reasonable prices when in season (if we're not stopped, we eat one every day during summer). But growing your own would be sooo much better! One day, when I've built my greenhouse (keep dreaming...), I'll give it a try

we'll see...there are some growers here to manage it, so I'm hopeful! If not, I'll find it at the market...but for once I'd love to have my own!

The Charentais melons are so nice, too - I assume you can buy those in Holland. They smell so sweet. The first ones are just now coming from Morocco and Italy...but I wait until I can buy them grown locally -- only because melons are so fussy about being transported long distances!

They were harvesting asparagus in the big field near where I work...I bought some of the just-picked green on my way home. It's a huge crop in this area, so we're lucky to have lots and lots of fresh asparagus for the full length of the season!

The lettuce is being advertised at the pick-your-own farms...and the cherry and apple trees at that farm are in full bloom -- I'll make confitures when those are ripe.

a few hundred kilometers make such a difference in growing conditions! Paris really isn't that southern, but the temperatures are just a tiny bit higher, which make your growing season longer. Even here within the netherlands, the differences are noticeable. My parents live 240 km to the south of us, and their trees and flowers are always a week (or two) ahead of ours.

Charentais are great melons too, I agree. But I prefer the freshness of pasteque over the sweetness of the charentais. I haven't had fresh asparagus yet, they are available in the stores but I didn't quite like the looks of them, they dry out so quickly! I'm still looking for a place nearby to buy them fresh, but they're more common in the southern region than over here. I think the soil here isn't right for them (clay and bog, here in the north). Did you have the green ones, or the big whites?

We have both, right at the moment - we had some huge white ones over the weekend, and some very nice green ones last night. My favorites are the slender little green ones (no bigger than a pencil), but I've never met an asparagus I didn't like! (or eat...)

I keep it very, very simple -- I just peel the ends, steam them, then just season with a little bit of salt and some butter. I love it too much to drown it in any kind of sauce!

Ooh. I almost forgot -- later, when only the green ones are available, I sometimes just toss them with a little olive oil, then put them on the barbecue grill. The dry heat creates an amazing flavor.

the small green ones are also great with a little melted butter and sliced almonds.... soft and nutty and to die for

I was just outside uncovering my garden so the sun can get to the soil. I think I picked a good place -- it's tucked into a corner between the wall of the garage, and a tall wall between us and the neighbor. It's sheltered from north and west winds, and faces south -- even with the weather we've had, it's quite a lot warmer in that corner than it is in the rest of the yard.

I'm so excited...my broccoli, cukes, and peas are all sprouting...which means I'm running right on 100% germination with all my seeds, too. I'm even seeing some very slow-to-the-finish radishes just starting to sprout...they're only 3 weeks behind everything else, but they're there!

The only downside? one of the neighbors' trees released all its seed last week -- it's not a cottonwood, but it's similar - a tiny seed floating on a ball of soft fluff.

All those little seeds are quite pleased to have found my SFG....as they've all germinated! They're too tiny to even pull yet...but I'll have a busy day as soon as they're big enough to get hold of.

Sounds like your garden is doing great! Did you already post a recent picture somewhere? (I'm not curious, I just always want to know everything )

No photos yet -- it's been so grey and miserable that the light is flat and there's no contrast, so I haven't posted anything yet.

Its trying to cloud up and be unpleasant again...so I may have to go back out and tuck them back in before it rains again!