First harvest of 2011

We have our first harvest of this year: radishes!  I was able to pick a few for taste testing last week and this week we are radish central.

I can just eat them as is but last night with our first real harvest we had spicy turkey tacos with pepper-jack cheese, avocado and radish from the garden.  It was wonderful.  Along with the radishes, our lettuce is getting bigger by the day and our snap peas are about 1 foot tall now. And along with the garden, weeds are growing like crazy too.  We have dandelions all over and a few bad non-native plants taking over:  Japanese Honeysuckle, Multiflora Rose and Periwinkle.   Lewie's been working hard to erratic these plants from our acreage although this will be a few years struggle and constant battle.  And while it seems like the honeysuckle is everywhere, it could be worse, we could have kudzu, thank goodness we don't.  Unfortunately, while these plants looks nice because they are some of the first to green in the spring and really make things colorful they are making it hard for our native plants to grow so by pulling up each one and planting a mix of native seeds in its place we are hoping to better our woods and Tennessee.  Besides planting native seeds, we'll soon be planting more in the garden too.  Our last frost date is April 15 and our zone is 7a so pretty soon we'll be adding our tomatoes/peppers/eggplant to the outside garden.  I also started most of our herbs inside but they aren't doing very well.  I can always start them by seed outside but I wanted to see what would happen if I tried to start them inside.  I don't mind experimenting, in fact, I enjoy it and we'll be doing a lot of experimenting this summer because it's a new house with new soil in a new zone.