First Fruits of the Season- Garden Project

Our garden continues to be off to a great start. And we plucked the first fruit of our labor, well mostly Tammy's labor...the cauliflower. She had already started this many weeks ago. We couldn't believe how big it had gotten over the week. 
 Tammy's Cauliflower:

 

Some of our transplants from last week didn't make it, but surprisingly the carrots we transplanted seem to be hanging in there. Many seeds that we planted did germinate and the seed leaves have sprouted. Next week I expect to find them well on their way. They included watermelon, pumpkins and zucchini. We also planted additional cucumber, pepper, and tomatoes so that we could replace the transplants we lost over the week. One thing we will have to do next week is build supports and trellises for the vine plants to grow up on.  

 In addition the kale looks about ready to use. So next week I expect to harvest some.

  But..... how to manage pests.

 As we tended the garden we found many pests- lots of critters wanting to eat our food.  But not to worry, this is part of gardening. I believe the above caterpillar to be a (Eastern) Black Swallowtail as we found it on our carrots. These butterflies are lovely and we simply sent him out of the garden so that perhaps we shall meet him again in his future life at which time we may not mind his company.  But for now we would rather he keep out as he feeds and lives on plants in the parsley family (including carrots, dill, fennel and parsnips) so we don't want him living in our bed or we may not have any carrots left for us to eat later. We also came across many other creatures fit to put in our nature notebooks such as slugs, grasshoppers, and Armadillidium vulgare, or the common pill bug.

Here is how the garden looked after week 2 of our garden project!

Linked up for Everything Gardening: from Teachers of Good Things