Mission Endure 82: Indoor Garden Update

I haven’t updated our indoor garden for a few months and I thought it was a good time today to chronicle what has been happening in our garden. We have had a very busy last couple of months, but the garden continues to carry on, producing lots of lettuce and a few other items.

We have narrowed down our lettuce growing to our two favorite varieties; Parris Island Cos and Flashy Butter Gem. They are two very different looking and tasting varieties of lettuce. Flash Butter Gem is a leaf lettuce that is very soft, smooth, and colorful, while Parris Island Cos is more of a traditional Romaine type of lettuce. The two mixed together make for a wonderful mix that is flavorful, tasty, and colorful. Here are two photos of our last harvest on Friday. First is a bag of Parris Island Cos and second is a bag of Flashy Butter Gem.

We still haven’t had to buy lettuce in the store since October 2021. Our lettuce garden continues to produce more lettuce than we can ever eat. We have 4 pots of Parris Island Cos and 4 pots of Flash Butter Gem. Each pot has 4 plants in it. They meet all of our lettuce requirements. Each type of lettuce can be harvested for a month or so and when we start harvesting it is time to plant another round of seeds.

Last year we started growing jalapenos, Beans, and Basil. They are all doing very well. Here is a picture of our current Jalapeno plant with ten or twelve peppers on it. One Jalapeno plant keeps us going for months. We are about ready to plant new Jalapeno seeds to pick up when this plant is done producing. This plant still has some production left in it, but it will take a couple of months for our next Jalapeno to start producing.

You can see out two Basil plants next to the Jalapeno plant. They are bolting and are nearing the end of their productive life. Their pots are too small. The next round I will put in larger 6” pots.

We experimented and planted both Radish and Spinach this summer. I planted both on August 6. The Spinach is slowly growing and I think it will be ready for harvest in a few weeks. I planted two different varieties of Spinach, so we will see which one does the best and provides the best taste. I am not very satisfied with how long the Spinach takes to grow, but it is finally starting to look better. You can see below that the Abundant Bloomsday Spinach on the left has outgrown the Longstanding Bloomsdale Spinach on the right. We will see what the taste test results prove to be.

I will have to say that the biggest disappointment this growing season has been the Radishes I planted. They were growing like crazy. Lots of large green growth. I harvested them on Saturday after over a month and a half of growing. They should have been ready two weeks ago, but I let them continue to grow. When I harvested them there was nothing below the surface of the soil. No edible part of the Radish. I won’t grow them again. The photo below shows how nice they looked. They were all leaf and no root! Oh well, that is why we experiment.