When It Rains, Things Grow

This would seem obvious enough, that bit about the rain making things grow. But when you haven't had much rain, it can be shocking how fast things will shoot up after just one good day of rain (which we had yesterday). The most obvious beneficiary is our salad cold frame:


It's just about bursting at the seams with lettuces and spinach, and the radishes are big enough now that they need to be pulled and kept in the fridge so they don't get overgrown and terrible. You can compare all this growth to a photo from just a week and a half ago if you don't believe me.

Our next section of salad greens and cool weather crops has all come up with the rain as well:


This looks to be good timing, as it should be ready to eat when we've picked over all the good stuff in the cold frame from the previous photo. This is one succession planting of what we've been calling our "cool season rows." It is, from left to right: radishes, carrots, lettuce, beets, swiss chard, bok choy, spinach, radicchio, and arugula. 

Other cool season crops that are happy for the rain:


Our broccoli looks like it's gotten over the hardening off mess-up and transplant shock. Ditto for the cabbage, but at this point in their growth broccoli and cabbage look about the same, so I didn't bother with a photo of each.

Two more things that have finally poked through the earth after the rain:


That's an asparagus spear! I didn't expect these to be up so soon after planting the roots, but here they are, poking up out of the earth. We can't eat them this year, but they are looking great.


Last but not least are the potatoes. These were planted back at the end of March, so we've been waiting for a while to see them. Not all of them are up yet, but there are more every day. 

Going outside today after a good soaking rain felt like seeing things anew after being away for awhile. Everything was so green and big and different. Things really do grow over night sometimes, and if you open your eyes, you can see changes every day out in the garden.

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