Cold Frame and Garden Update

The construction of the cold frame was completed several weeks ago and it was placed in it's permanent spot shortly thereafter. It has been as useful as we hoped: Onions, leeks, cabbage, kale and tomatoes were all hardened off in it, peppers, which found it too cold to sprout in the basement, quickly popped up once placed in the warm bed, and heat-loving cucumbers have been planted in the frame, where they will remain the entire summer.  With the help of the cold frame, a stretch of warm weather and lovely spring showers the garden has taken off.

Cold Frame with Tomato Plants

Peas

Cabbage

Row of Young Beets

One of the Raised Beds with Lettuce, Cabbage and Kale
(Shortly before this picture was taken a large hole was discovered in the bed
where a cabbage plant had previously been located.
It is uncertain as to how said hole appeared, but we did find a muddy-pawed pup nearby.) 

Asparagus - not as straight as store-bought, but fresh and tender! 

Sophie Snoozing on a Garden Table

Rhubarb Bed

It is very nice having perennial plants like asparagus and rhubarb in the garden.  They are the first plants to sprout up from the cold, semi-frozen ground, helping you believe that spring will actually come to the tundra known as Wisconsin.  As such, they are the first plants ready for harvest, which means one can enjoy fresh produce far before any other plants are even close to maturity.  It also means that they are done being harvested just when the other spring plants ripen, thus avoiding "harvest overload" (which will occur in late summer when the 39 tomato plants, 72 cucumber plants and 348 other plants in the garden all decide to bring forth prodigious amounts of produce all at once - an event I greatly look forward too).  For now I am happy with cutting a few stalks of asparagus each day and harvesting an arm-full of rhubarb every week.  Along with the pie I made a few weeks ago, I also cut up and froze a total of 47 cups of rhubarb.  The rhubarb seems to have liked the old chicken bedding I side-dressed it with.  We still have a few weeks to go before its harvest season is done - I wonder how much we'll end up with?