Sustainable Community Gardening, Washington DC: Harvest begins

First harvest last Saturday (4/25) - enough spinach (silver dollar size) for two salads. More again on Tuesday, and lettuce is ready for leaf harvest. Should have enough of both for a few solid weeks. Everything survived 3 90-degree days (in April!). Fortunately the spinach is too young to even consider bolting.

Green beans are up, everyone else is happy and continues to grow. A few more beds turned over yesterday before what is looking to be a pretty significant few days of rain.

I'm anxious to get a few more things in the ground, edamame in particular, next planting of green beans. I'm still holding off on tomatoes. They never seem to benefit from very early planting, but rather just sit there not really growing for a couple of weeks and seemingly more susceptible to leaf diseases.

The USDA people's garden got it's official launch on Earth Day. I wanted to attend but work got in the way. I wonder how the White House Obama garden is faring. Of all things, I toured the white house gardens 10 days ago, but it didn't quite go into the area of the vegetable garden.

Andy Clark
SARE Outreach Coordinator
DC community gardener