Locavore pizza

This was two weeks ago now, but it was DELICIOUS: pesto pizza with locally grown/raised roasted beets, asparagus, potatoes, caramelized onions and local pork sausage. Heaven.

Flowers and birds and bunnies oh my

So we've had our share of garden pests this year. Squirrels, bunnies, chipmunks and other little critters also enjoy the fruits of our labor. So we've decided to fence off the lowest beds first - the tomato beds.

Secondly, I've attracted a lovely mix of birds just by changing our food source. We now have northern cardinals, purple finches, goldfinches, nuthatches, chickadees and hummingbirds regularly feeding in our yard. They are much more beautiful and have the sweetest songs. The sparrows continue to feed but I beam every time I see a goldfinch - or two or three - feeding on our thistle. I had no idea it was that simple around here to attract birds.

Midsummer Garden

We are suffering from a midsummer garden. So many crops so close to harvest (carrots, onions, more broccoli, squash, loads of tomatoes); so many main season crops just sprouting/transplanted  (green beans, edamame, corn, more storage onions; cucumbers); a few spots laying low for a few weeks before fall crops are sowed. Hard to think about cold-weather crops on a week like this.

The heat and humidity have been a boom for the garden. The watermelon tunnel is the best we've ever grown. Three varieties growing in an 8-foot long remesh hoop house. It should be a bumper crop this year, thanks to our hoop house we placed over it - and still have in place. After this cold high pressure moves through this week and it looks like the heat is with us for good we'll take off the plastic.

We have been eating well from the garden but still feel there's more we could be doing:

• savoy cabbage
• broccoli goodness
• greens, more than we can eat 
• basil (need to do another double batch of pesto, seems to be a monthly routine)
• carrots, baby carrots to think out the main crop
• strawberries continue
• raspberries, just starting to be gobbled up
• tomatoes, a few more this month!

Grow beans, grow!

I spy red, orange and yellow in the garden beds!

Mmmm, sweet bells. This is our early variety. The later one is just opening flowers. Perfection.

Feeding the family

I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised. We are eating a fair bit of food out of the garden. Ezra's favorite are the shelling peas; Jonah prefers the snap peas but has enjoyed his share of fresh peas! I love having fresh, tender salad greens I can pick fresh every morning in my Mother's Day gift: a harvesting basket.

As May comes to a close, here's what we've eaten from our vegetable garden this month:

• radishes, two plantings - enough to put in salads everyday
• pok choy, about 8 heads - enough for about six different meals since early May
• loose leaf lettuce, pounds and pounds - overabundant by the second week in May 
• spinach, many pounds
• snap peas, handfuls at a time
• shelling peas, bowlfuls at a time
• tomatoes - three ripe ones and one big slicer ripening as I type
• basil - made a quart of pesto on May 30(!)
• strawberries, a handful here and there since last week

Symmetry

It is with much effort that we are gardening with a more refined aesthetic. Part exercise in garden planning, part beautification of our neighborhood. John built this trellis on Friday, along with all of the tomato trellises: a simple Eliot Colemen design we modified slightly after the first one. Instead of having them be flush on the ends we let the top overhang, thus giving it more of a Japanese arts and crafts feel. 

 

Butternut squash trellis.

The trellises for tomatoes (middle and back beds) and for our pole beans (front "lettuce" bed). The middle bed was the first one built and after that we allowed the extra length overhang, in part because it meant no scrap wood.

The bed I'm most proud of for it's sheer symmetry: basil, tomatoes, carrots, peppers and cosmos. 

Purple haze carrot patch in the above-mentioned bed.

The Growing Garden

Ezra has a knack for picking more than just our radishes.

  

Jonah harvested our first ripe tomato, May 20. Unfortunately the kids love tomatoes too so we had to share with them!

My favorite view of all the front garden beds from the 'orchard'.

Watermelon and cantaloupe hoophouse.

Grow, garden, grow.

Mid May

Well this garden continues to inspire and delight me. I am quite proud of both the timing and amount of food we have eaten thus far this spring. We cooked a stir fry with most of the pok choy on Tuesday night as some heads were starting to bolt; I sowed another row in our lettuce bed which we'll probably be eating in another week or two.

the lone ripe tomato. won't be another one for at least a month.

We harvested our first planting of radishes over the past 2 weeks. Our second planting is swelling so it won't be long before those end up on our plates as well. Our pea vines are flowering and the pods are growing by the minute. We are now completely eating greens from our yard, yet we ask ourselves why it takes so long to get to that point (mid-May versus mid-April). Next year I will sow lettuce in mid-March in a covered bed in addition to starting lettuce really early indoors.

While lettuce gets bitter in the heat of summer I am trying to stick romaine heads in around where our waltham butternut will be vining up, as well as on the north side of our green bean vines. Both will be trellised upwards of 6 feet so I hope we can extend our harvest into mid-July and only have about a month without fresh greens.

Our tomatoes, eggplants and peppers are all flowering and flourishing. We have 7 eggplants, 14 tomatoes, and about 12 bell peppers. I am doing 2 successional plantings of summer squash, one in the orchard bed and one in the raised bed after we harvest our brassicas. I am preparing a hoop house for our watermelon and cantaloupes: stars and moon, yellow doll and minnesota midget. Hopefully with a little extra heat from the landscape fabric and the hoop house we'll get earlier and heavier crops. We'll soon know.

the mighty radish.

salad bed.

tomato/pepper bed with carrots in foreground.

peapods.