Cauliflower blanching

We had rain for most of the end of last week, and my garden was very, very happy about all the water. My plants have really taken off, and even though I'm harvesting lettuce and arugula several times a day (arugula omlettes are fantastic for breakfast, by the way), each time I go out it looks like the plants have gotten bigger.

The herbs that I started from seed are also coming up nicely, which is a little surprising to me because I did a very haphazard job planting them. Below, the front left is thai basil, with regular basil in the back left. Thyme (which I bought as a seedling) is in the back right, and the front right is dill started from seed.

My tomato plants continue to look extremely happy - planting them in beds full of compost and manure was definitely a good call. Below, you can see that blossoms are starting to form on the tomato plants. The stems are nice and thick and strong, and I spent more time this morning pulling off suckers, which seem to grow back as soon as I turn around.

The snow peas are now all tall enough to reach the trellis, so I've held off on giving them more support as they seem to be hanging on well. Today as I was weeding, I also learned that snow pea plants smell wonderful - almost sweet.

Remember that dud row of swiss chard that I mentioned before? Well, it's finally germinated. Very strange, but I'm not questioning it. Below are the little guys - looking at the bed, it's very hard to believe that I planted them on the same day as their tall neighbors.

The pepper seedlings that I bought are also starting to blossom and form peppers, although the purple peppers that I started seem to be a little behind. I think that the seedlings I bought were older than the peppers that I started - at least, I hope that's why! Below is the green pepper that has started to flower, which you can see if you look closely below.

The cauliflower looks beautiful. Two of the plants have started forming heads - the more developed one is below. I read in my gardening bible that you need to blanch the heads to keep them nice and white, so I blanched the two heads that were ready this morning. The process was really quite easy, I just loosely pulled the outer leaves together over the cauliflower head and tied them together with twine.

The radishes and carrots look good, although I pulled a few of the radishes and the roots were all spindly and not radish-like at all. I'm borrowing Mike's homebrewing motto, and just giving them more time.

The broccoli below is probably ready to be harvested, so I think I'll be going out later today to grab it before it flowers. I'm thinking a quiche with broccoli and arugula will be delicious.

Finally, below are the beets (back) and bok choy (front). Given how much damage the bok choy sustained from the flea beetles, I'm impressed by its growth. It's time for me to thin the beets, which I think I'll do later this week. We have quite a few people coming this weekend for fourth of July, so thinning/weeding might be a group activity.