Now starting to look like a real garden in May

Now the gardens are beyond that "catching up" stage, with some crops ready to harvest and most resembling their adult selves. 

Shallow planter with chard and dwarf kale

This planter will test whether or not we can grow kale and chard in 5" of soil.  I'm hoping that less depth will simply give us smaller plants, but no less healthy and happy plants.  Keeping it watered should be the challenge, but hopefully we'll have that under control.  We chose a dwarf kale, so it's full size potential is already less than the larger varieties like lacinato, which we're planting in a deeper pot.

Radishes and beets, with nasturtium on the front edge

To the right are radishes and beets inter-planted.  Now it looks like a mess, but hopefully all were planted enough distance from each other, so the harvesting of radishes will leave the smaller beet seedlings undisturbed.  Towards the back (unseen), many of the beets are still tiny seedlings with no or only one small true leaves showing. Those in the front are getting more sunlight so more mature.  Below, we can see one of these mature beet seedlings that has several true leaves.  These may be the chioggia, which usually have a lighter green leaf and red stem.

Arugula (below) and turnips (top left)

The arugula (right and upper-right) is really coming strong.  We'll allow it to grow for a couple more weeks so it can be harvested for a special meal in our cafeteria.