2009-07-26
Harvesting Rainbows and Turnips
In the spring, I planted seeds for radishes, broccoli, tomatoes and turnips in the pots of the penthouse.
Some garden vegetables and herbs sprouted from seeds that dropped from the plants that I had last year. When I harvest lettuce, I only take the side leaves and let the center stem grow. Eventually, the lettuce develops blooms like dandelions and, if I leave it alone, I get a pot full of lettuce the next year. When I harvest dill, I always allow some of the yellow flowers to develop into seeds, and it comes back year-after-year. The sunflowers that sprouted from dropped seeds had to be thinned out because there were just too many for my small pots.
I already had a nice crop of radishes this year, but the broccoli does not want to bloom. I saw some small florets, but they were too small to pick and they opened into tiny blue flowers. I have been eating some of the broccoli leaves. They are thick and chewy like cabbage. The turnips really surprised me. They grew very fast, and I chopped the greens and diced the roots to make vegetable soup.
Yesterday, when I walked by the balcony, I saw a rainbow that was so close that it seemed to be growing out of one my planters. I did not try to reach for it because it is a 20-story drop to the ground.
