I have collected many baskets over the years. Each of them is used for a different purpose. This small round basket is my meal basket that I keep next to the fridge. This evening I cut some Bloomsdale spinach, broccoli de cicco, and green onion for my noodle soup.
Both spinach and broccoli are my favorite greens. I am happy with the result of growing both vegetables this year. I have totally failed on growing spinach last year, and the broccoli was infested with broccoli worms and aphids. I didn't want to give up on my favorite veggies, so this year I started growing spinach seeds in the green house until they were at least 6 inches tall. Still, they started to look beat up after transplanted outside. I think it had to do with the late summer this year. It's been usually cool and wet this year. It took several weeks for them to adjust and started to thrive. All the spinach plants are flowering now. I will soon be able to collect seeds for next year.
I came upon a posting of 4-inch 6-pack broccoli de cicco for sale on Cragislist.com. I didn't know what broccoli de cicco was until further reading. I was excited since I love the idea of eating all parts of broccoli. I ordered 2 6-packs of broccoli de cicco, and about half of them died off. The other half started to do much better after I transferred them to a different vegetable bed with a different soil mix. I was worried about broccoli worms and aphids. Amazingly, only one small floret was infested with aphids and no worm on any of them. I am not sure why I didn't get the worms this year. A few things I did differently with the broccoli this year are: different location, different variety, further spacing, and I eat the florets early instead of waiting for them to get bigger. Last year I wanted to wait for them to get bigger, and they turned into caterpillar food.
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