No Trouble Harvesting, But...

I'm impatient for more things to gnaw on from our little garden. I know by the end of summer I'll be sick of gnawing on things from our little garden, but for now I feel kind of starved for green things.

What have we eaten from the garden so far?  A handful of scrawny radishes (at 25 days, they should be much fatter maybe, considering they're supposed to be ready to pick at 30 days), kale, mesclun lettuce mix, nasturtium leaves, and the bolting tips of the bok choi and Thai and Italian basil. Most of those went into a small salad that we had with dinner.

Dave also planted a new row of radishes in the sunnier bed where the zucchini will go in July. (Don't know how much to believe it, but someone suggested dodging the squash bugs by planting after the 4th of July. We'll see.) We also started some "straight 8" cucumbers in 4-inch pots to go into the garden later.

Non-garden/patio plantings: More chard, mustard greens, beets to be used for greens, something called Red Orach (or mountain spinach), and salad burnet, a green in the Rosaceae family (so says Wikipedia). Those all went into 2- or 4-inch pots on the patio and may or may not get planted in the garden. Kind of depends on the weather, I reckon. Don't want to put greens in just to watch them bolt when the New Mexico sun beats them into submission. If they stay in pots on the patio, we can always move them into shadier/cooler spots.

Other observations:

The first pest came in the form of a little green caterpillar that is probably (given the pardon it got from both me and Dave) going to wreak havoc on the greens. I have no trouble harvesting plants, but I do have trouble keeping other creatures from harvesting plants.

There are lots of little ladybug larvae around this year, including a few in the garden and on the patio. I love the little things. They're so gross and cute all at the same time.

Gray Kitty mowed down one of the littler corn plants by stretching out on it. He also had a little lie down among the tiny beets but that didn't do much damage; they perked right back up.

Our patio is looking finer. I need some pictures to prove it, yes, but I'm starting to like all our little potted flowers and such. Today I'll move some of our larger pottery pieces out there.