You Grow Girl™

Last week I pulled up a bouquet of radishes for a dinner salad from the big round washbasin they were growing in.

White: ‘Icicle’
White and Red: ‘Sparkler’
Purple: ‘Purple Plum’

Another cool plant from Barry’s garden. I got smart and took a photo of the tag that accompanied this one. Nope, I didn’t just happen to know the botanical name off hand.

These flowering succulents live in a container in my neighbour Barry’s garden. He has dedicated an entire section of his garden to alpine troughs, of which this is one. I know this plant is in the Mesembryanthemaceae family, I just don’t know which one. I’m going to go out on a limb and take a wild guess that it is closely related to the icicle plants that are taking over California, which would make it Lampranthus.

And with that paragraph, I think I just surpassed my daily geek out quota.

I think my mache crop is on its last legs this spring. I did not start early enough this year and missed out on at least one additional harvest. Mache likes to germinate in cooler temperatures and the last few seeds I sowed in the empty spaces don’t seem to have done anything. I’ll sow it again in the early fall, which tends to be the time of year that it prefers anyways.

I’m a bit sad to see it go. Mache is our very favourite green. I used to think it was over-rated until I discovered the secret — salt the fresh rosettes lightly and pair it with sweet fruit and little bits of a sharp cheese. Yum. I could go for that right now but it’s only 10am.

Note: The little red-tinged plants in the foreground are purslane (Portulaca olearacea) seedlings. Purslane is considered a weed since it self-seeds, but I always encourage it to come up in my pots. This is another excellent and highly nutritious green that I harvest and eat in the same way I prepare the mache. Simply cut the entire plant off at the root and eat it whole, uncooked.

• Grow a Crate o’ Mache