this is a pretty good shot of all the work i did in the garden. in the front left, you can see my rows of carrots. i ran out of the purple carrot seed so this is mostly orange “mignon” carrots. in the front right is a bed of “majesty” red loose-leaf and “lattuga quatro stagnani” butterhead lettuce. it’s basically completely covered in seeds so i can grow some of that fancy salad mix that costs like 5 bucks a bag at the grocery store. did you know 1000 lettuce seeds costs as much as half a bag of salad mix? literally 1000 seeds. even assuming like a 10% germination rate, thats more lettuce than i could ever know what to do with. just above the lettuce bed is a row of mizuna, which is a japanese chrysanthemum green. it’s really good in soup. i’m going to take some of this to the japanese restaurant i go to and see if the guy will trade me for a free soup. there’s a patch of dug-up dirt in the very back that also has more lettuce in it.

i’m thinking about ordering one last batch of seeds. when you’re planting, it’s important to stagger your planting so you spread out the harvest time. so far i think i have about 60% of my garden prepped for planting and seeds in about half of that. i grossly underestimated how much dirt i actually have to work in. some day i need to take a measuring tape out there and figure out how big it is. the point is, there’s a lot more room to plant. what should i plant?

edit 11/29/09 - i bought mesclun, bachelor buttons, a butterfly-attracting flower mix, and daikon at hashimoto nursery. i’m ordering lobelia, cauliflower, nigella, mesclun, “asian salad mix”, and marigolds. that’s it for the year!