Garden Bonus

Saturday was our first official day working in our community garden plot, and as I was digging up the spaces where I would plant the first spring crops, I spotted... volunteer radish sprouts!

In a community garden, you don't expect plants to come back year after year, because the whole thing is mowed over in the fall and rough-tilled in the spring.  The dirt that was in your garden last season is now mixed with your neighbor's dirt, and any plants you left behind could be chopped up or buried or who knows what.  Well, some of my radishes bolted last spring when the weather got too hot too quickly, and they went to flower and then seed, so I just left them there.  Out of laziness, I guess.  But—surprise, surprise!—the seeds survived the till and germinated on their very own. 

The tiny seedlings were concentrated where my radishes had been last summer, but they were also scattered around the general area.  I left a patch of them to develop fully, but I picked a whole bunch that became our salad that night.  I believe these are what gourmet restaurants call micro-greens.  We call them bonus food.