We had our first from-the-garden salad last night. When I say “from the garden” I mean that most of it was from our own little urban homestead.
The rest of it was from a great big garden somewhere else. Factory farms count, right?
Although the greens (and reds!) in the garden are starting to look respectable, we don’t want to denude them just yet.
So we possess our souls in patience and augment what we grew with romaine from the supermarket.
Here’s the lineup from the picture on the left:
The big green leaves are supermarket romaine. I put them in the colander as a backdrop for everything else.
Those big maroon leaves are red romaine, a variety I’ve not encountered before. It tastes pretty much like the green romaine, but it sure makes a prettier salad bowl.
Look closer and you’ll see small green leaves. That’s baby spinach. Now we’re going to leave the plants alone for a bit so we can pick adolescent spinach.
That spindly red tuber is a French breakfast radish that wasn’t really ready to harvest. However, I wanted it for symbolic reasons. (Its greens went into the boiling bag.)
The cherry tomatoes came from our AeroGarden hydroponic setup, which was a birthday present from DF. (Although I think it was more of a “get us through January, February, March and April” for us both.) It’s been producing for a couple of months now.
Chives: If you have them once, you’ll have them always. They pop up every year.
About that cuke: The plant had blossoms and a few embryonic cucumbers in late May, when we set it out in the greenhouse DF built. To our surprise, we found a nearly six-inch-long fruit shortly thereafter. Yesterday it measured eight inches, which according to the plant tag meant “it’s done – slice away!”
Health on a fork
DF put together a lovely salad from the first harvest and topped it with sliced hard-cooked egg and the Copper River red salmon we were recently gifted. As always, the first greens (and reds) of the year were superb. They tasted healthy, if such a thing is possible. We savored each picked-10-minutes-ago bite.
In another week or so we’ll have salad every day, thanks to the nearly nonstop sun (but relatively little heat, which means no bolting). At that point we can stop buying from the supermarket, which is fine by me.
What I’m really anxious to see, however, are the tomatoes. We have a dozen pots in the greenhouse – Patio, Czech Bush, Alaska Stoke, Bonnie Best, Cherokee Purple, Stupice and a mystery variety whose tag got lost in the greenhouse. (DF is calling it the “Hail Mary.”)
Some of those plants are showing little green balls of hope along with the yellow blossoms. Even though there ain’t no tomato like a Jersey tomato, fresh beats imported any day.
Memories of this garden will keep us going during the depths of winter. Our summers are short but boy, are they bright. Crunchy, too.
Readers: Are you gardening, even in a window box or a container? What are you growing?
Related reading:
- The marvel of an Alaska summer
- Gardening on a small scale
- The low-maintenance preppers
- The blackberry gavotte
No garden,but I did a CSA box this year. Two weeks in and so far lots of lettuces and other greens. I live alone so its almost too much lettuce. I have frozen some of the greens. I’m in Michigan so fresh produce is just coming on. I’ll be freezing 40 pounds of blueberries and hopefully some cherries,peaches, and apples as they come into season. Thanks to the freezer I don’t need to buy much fruit in the winter. I try to be a localvore as much as possible. Nothing better than freshly picked produce.
Our raspberries may or may not produce. We have some herbs by the back door. We haven’t had real garden since the squirrels took one bite out of each hot pepper. (I hope their little mouths burned!)
My container vegetable garden did not yield much this year. I planted lettuce plants and lettuce seeds and got maybe a total of four salads. I had the best luck with arugula, which is reseeding itself. I had one tomato plant and got four tiny grape tomatoes.
I’m in Florida, so our growing season is basically over. I am now harvesting mangoes, but the harvest of those is also less bountiful this year.
I’m debating whether to do lettuce again next year. I love the idea of growing my own food, but the reality hasn’t been as good. I am having moderate luck with herbs.
Teresa
Our growing season got a late start due to cool weather, but the garden seems to be making up for lost time. We’ve got green tomatoes on our cherry tomato plants, & the broccoli & cauliflower plants are growing nicely. The only thing we planted that hasn’t come up is spinach, but there is no such thing as a perfect growing year. 😉
If only there were….Our beets have given up the ghost. 🙁
4 tomato plants + a bunch of herbs for me. I lucked into finding a great source of tomato starts this year at a great price. My starts even came with some baby tomatoes already on them!
Nothing has ripened yet, but there are lots of tomatoes reaching the right size. Hot temps this weekend have me hopeful I’ll be harvesting some tomatoes soon.
I have no done much so far. Need to get out there and chop the weeds that have invaded our yard from the neighbor; they are all about 3 ft high with lots of stickers. Tomato plants are still there. Marigolds are doing well. Something is eating the green bean leaves. Can’t see the watermelon plants. Squash plants have pretty flowers. Basil has reseeded itself. Potatoes might be ready to pick.
No garden this year! 🙁 That’s something my husband always did, but this year he has been working so much overtime that it has been tough to keep up with stuff around the house. We usually do tomato, bell pepper, summer squash, and zucchini. We’ll have to make a better effort next year to get some vegetables in next year. For this year, I’ll support the local economy and go to the Farmer’s market for my fresh veggies.
Unfortunately, our straw bale garden got off to a haphazard start this year, and hasn’t done as well as in previous years. Tomatoes are growing fine, and we have half a dozen or so grape tomatoes ready to harvest. Cukes, zukes, butternut squash and canteloupes are struggling. Basil and garlic are growing well; dill is not.
We bought a pot of variety greens from the farm stand, which did okay until it got hot and things bolted. My potted lavender is doing well, though it’s not for eating.
Given the amount of time and money we’ve put in, we’re probably better off supporting our local farm stand and the farmer’s market. I haven’t decided whether to try more systematically next year, or just grow some herbs and potted peppers and call it good.
Love my garden this year…tomatoes, cukes, onions, lettuce and 6 different herbs. This is the first year we have done lettuce and we have been eating it for about a week now and it has an excellent taste. My brother questioned me if the financial cost of the garden is really worth it….I say “I love that feeling of going out to the garden and getting fresh”! I don’t know if we save tons of money with making the plant boxes, getting soil and paying for a few plants but I think it is worth it in a lot of other ways. Next year the boxes are made (and paid for), I started a composing garden as well so no soil will need to be brought and I harvest my herbs for winter months so I never need to pay $3.99 for them.
Happy Gardening 🙂
I’m planted two citrus trees this year, a dwarf lemon and a lime, and they’re doing ok thanks to the deluge of rain we’ve had here in Texas lately. I call them my ‘cocktail trees’. LOL We go through a lot of garnishes in my house. 😀
Wish we could grow citrus, but that’s not happening unless we had a heated greenhouse. DF is intrigued by the possibility of growing fruit trees, but we’d have to protect them with cages due to moose predation.
It always surprises me to visit my daughter in Phoenix and see lemon, lime and orange trees in people’s yards — and the fruit littering the lawns. I keep thinking, “Why are you letting that fruit hit the ground!?!”
Also growing lemon balm, cilantro and bay leaf, and I just got a new composter. Fun times ahead!
“Ain’t no tomato like a Jersey tomato”— YES!!! Thanks for that gustatory reminder of my years in Philadelphia & environs. I feel the same way about Jersey blueberries. Here in New England, what is grown is no comparison. I love to support local farmers’ markets, but wait anxiously every year ’til New Jersey blueberries are shipped our way. They usually come from the Hammonton area.
I have been to Hammonton and yes, it’s famous for blueberries. The wild blueberries here are delicious but a pain in the neck to pick because they grow on plants only a few inches off the ground. You have to kneel and it takes a long time to get a pint. Lowbush cranberries (aka “lingonberries”) are even worse, since they’re even shorter than blueberry plants and each produces only a few berries; however, the flavor is quite unique and they make a wonderful quick bread (with butter and orange juice instead of milk and oil).
Okay, now I’m hungry.
First NJ blueberries of the season arrived in NH yesterday. These are from a Hammonton farm, with a distributor in Glassboro. At 97 cents for a full pint, they are a frugalist’s dream—inexpensive AND tasty. Wish I could send you a pint.
We have blueberry bushes that are looking beautiful and basil plants. I still want to put in tomatoes but I think it may be too late.
My garden is sputtering along but I haven’t done much puttering to help it out. I did pick a handful of raspberries this morning and pulled a few radishes and clipped some peas. All of these items will be in today’s lunch. Garlic will be ready to pull in a week or so. The tomatoes are coming along slowly, as are the beans, peppers, cabbage, and broccoli. The vining plants may not make it–not much growth so far. I banned zucchini from my garden a couple of years ago because one plant is still too much.
I thinned the peaches this year and hope for a good crop of large fruit. And the grapes might be a good crop this year, although I only have one plant.
One of the best ways to start my day is to roll out of bed, make a cup of tea, and wander through the garden to see what is ripe. It doesn’t get much better than that!
“little green balls of hope” is one of the more descriptive phrases I’ve read in a while.
Sadly, I’m not a gardener. I start out with lovely good intentions, but they whither and die without bearing fruit.
Much like my tomato plants which grow luxurious and huge and never even set out a single bloom.