Summer Blooms

We haven't focused much on our flower garden, but we did plant some perennials and annuals for color -- and Stephanie, David's mom, designed a pretty little patch in the front yard.

There's always next year -- this yard is an ongoing project.

Fruits of Our Labor

In reviewing our posts, I am surprised I haven't mentioned food. Cooking with our own produce is half the reason we garden! Our goal this summer is to have a meal made completely with our own labor, but that's unlikely: the meal would be unbalanced, because we don't raise enough protein or carbs. (If only we'd gotten those chickens I wanted....) Still, more and more of our plates feature our own food.

One of the first meals we made was Easter lunch: crab cakes with cilantro cream, braised fennel, roasted potatoes, roasted beets and artichokes, and a salad, which featured our first lettuces, tender and sweet. (Only the herbs and lettuces were ours.) We grew winter density, pinetree, deer's tongue, tom thumb, mesclun mix, and amaranth, a grain whose leaves are a vivid pink (see left). One of the amaranth (which can also be used as ornamental plantings) is gigantic -- a blazing pink and yellow two-foot plant in the middle of our herbs. We plan on growing some in the flower garden next year.












Our scapes were next, and we ate them with red chioggia beets were grew on the back porch. [We also grew yellow mangle beets, but they were crowded and grew more slowly. Once they were ready, I witnessed a squirrel filching them -- and took a video of his munching because it was cute. We'll consider the donation a tithe to the animals, who have been relatively kind to our garden.] Later, we stuffed trout with scapes and lemons and grilled them outside, inspired by Finn, a prequel to Twain's classic that I was reading at the time.




We didn't grow strawberries, but I picked scads at a local farm and made strawberry pie and 12 jars of strawberry jam. My ADD got the best of me, and I failed to add the sugar and pectin in the right order, so the jam refused to set completely. When I've had it on pb & j sandwiches, I race to lick the sides of the bread before it drips on my lap. The taste is fresh and the color vibrant, but jam it is not, so I've been passing it out to friends as "strawberry topping" for ice cream or yogurt. You know, it's all in the marketing.

Observant bakers will note my lattice [above] is poorly constructed. I am not good with spatial puzzles, and I couldn't follow the drawings in the Cook's Illustrated recipe. As the picture above also shows, I also lost track of time and let the whole mess boil over on the stove. Thank goodness we have an electric range. I can't imagine how hard clean up would've been with the nooks and crannies of a gas stove.


Next on our table were our wonderful purple and yellow bush beans. I made pesto, too, for cheese ravioli and another salad with our cucumbers and lettuces. (The tomatoes weren't ripe yet.) My carnivore husband surprised me by being completely satisfied with this vegetarian meal. Usually, he begrudgingly eats what I serve and laments the lack of meat -- or, inexplicably, supplements his meal with chips. Yes. David is a chip fiend. I am not sure if he likes chocolate or chips better, but each makes an appearance daily in his diet. He's blessed with a rapid-fire metabolism, so he can get away with it.



Then came blueberries, eight pounds of them, and not a one from our own bushes (thanks, birds). Franklin has a blueberry farm smack dab in the middle of town -- 5,000 bushes strong! -- and I stopped in last Saturday after going to a yard sale. The $3.25 a pound they charge is a steal, especially since the experience is pure therapy: 8:30 a.m., 70 degrees, slight breeze, ripe fruit, twittering birds (knocking out half the crop, the owner told me), huge bushes that allow you to stand up straight while picking, and the soft murmuring of people amid the rows. I picked a pound and then drove right home to get David. We returned to pick seven pounds more, and I made a blueberry pie -- with a crumb topping this time -- and served it at board game night with friends. I ate the last piece last night with ice cream. Sigh.

There were many other meals, most of which we didn't photograph, but we made sure to document (in film and video) the pièce de résistance (and -- frankly -- the raison d’être of our garden): our First Tomato Sandwich.

There are hard and fast rules for its construction: dark pumpernickel rye, lightly toasted, generous amounts of mayo (Hellman's regular is the only brand), and several layers of thinly sliced tomatoes. Avoiding delays is important for temperature: you want to bite into the sandwich when the bread is still warm and the mayo melty; the tomatoes should never, ever, EVER be refrigerated.

The type of tomato can vary, based on availability and interest. In this case, we used stupice, because they were the earliest to ripen -- though I did have a second sandwich made of sliced sun sugars (tiny little things), because I couldn't wait torturous days for the other tomatoes to be ready.

David takes the chip selection seriously, which I appreciate (not when we are shopping, but later, when we eat). This year, he couldn't decide, so we had both Pringles originals and Fritos. Chips are nice (and we also had baked beans), but those are really beside the point. Later, when the tomato tornado arrives (we hope!), we'll get more choosy about tomato variety and we might even vary the ingredients (David adds cheese and I add slivers of onion). For now, though, we're aiming for the Platonic ideal.

--Camille

Damage Control

Our tomatoes look like the walking wounded of a battle field. Owing to the abundance of nitrogen in the compost we used, they have grown out of control, outreaching our heads by several feet. Most people's tomatoes are chest high at this point, and our friend Paul's are wonderfully full and abundant. "I don't pick suckers," he said.

Maybe we need to let the suckers go next year but control the top growth. Some of the current tomato plants are ridiculous: bent over double on themselves. We have tied all of the plants to posts, which are woefully short, and tried to salvage some damage from the fungal infection by chopping off more leaves and letting others die off.

I read that copper would help the fungal situation, but I've not gotten myself over to the guys at Agway for help yet. We worked so hard getting the garden started (well, mostly that was David), so I am not sure what accounts for our current malaise. With tomato harvest rapidly approaching, I hope we don't ruin the season!

More embarrassing was our visit from our neighbor who said the garden was bone dry. I knew that, but I'd heard rain was coming all week, and I wanted to let Mother Nature do her stuff first. "Never listen to the news; just water!" Billy said, and he's right. Our raised beds do a good job draining, so overwatering isn't a problem.

Well, today it rained, and it was a light, long rain, which is the best kind for now. That way the tomatoes won't burst with a deluge.

So. Another issue with the tomatoes is the overabundance of small ones. We have current tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, sun sugars, and tumbling toms. All four types are small. We have some monster brandywines, and german pinks (including the bizarre quadruple tomato pictured below [and this is a month-old photo, when it was 4 inches or so]), but very few solid, medium-size tomato-sandwich size fruits. One of our main pleasures is tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches on pumpernickel rye. Cherry tomatoes just won't cut it.
Next year, we've decided, we will plant 6 or 7 standard size tomato plants and then one each of the other, more exotic, varieties.

In happier news, we've eaten wonderful, wonderful yellow pencil pod and royal burgundy bush beans. I wish we had more room for additional plans and varieties. I've given some beans away, just because they are so pretty, but I want more for myself for eating! We've also had more zucchini and squash, pesto from the basil, and herbs. The colors in the garden are spectacular, with bright red peppers and amaranth, and these gorgeous purple eggplants.










The potatoes are still a mystery, and they aren't fun when we pull them up too soon, so I think we'll use that space (which seems wasted now) for more beans next year.

--Camille

Trouble in Eden

We returned from my brother's wedding in Florida to an exploded garden. We had tons of cucumbers (still tiny), loads of lettuce (gone bitter), and missing blueberries. It seems the bluebirds and robins like blueberries. Damn. Serves us right, though, for being so lax about getting the netting on. Next year.

We also discovered, especially in the last couple of days, that some of our plants have been munched. I suspect the woodchuck. He shows up in the lower yard several times a week, munching on various plants (including hostas), and dashes away when I open the sliding door. I can't tell if he has good eyesight or good hearing, but he doesn't have good manners. Based on the chomps' height -- and his proximity -- I blame him. Our acorn and butternut squash have no leaves, and the basil is mangled. I hope they can recover (and I need to make pesto soon).

This morning, I let the cats out at 3 a.m., coyotes be damed, so that they might earn their keep by securing the garden. (I let them out because I am up from 2:30 to 4:30 most mornings, for some reason -- baby is active, I think.)

Another unfortunate fact is the tomatoes' fungal problem. I take part of the blame (Mother Nature is also culpable). David suggested we planted the tomatoes too close together, but I just refused to believe him (I wanted to have as many plants as possible). Well, I think their wonderfully abundant leaves don't get enough circulation, and with the cool and rainy weather, they don't get dried by the sun. I tried to solve the problem by cutting off all the lower, yellowed leaves, but it keeps creeping upwards. So, let me publicly admit that My Husband Was Right.

I hope the tomatoes can ripen before we lose all the foliage. There are tons and tons of tomatoes already (especially on those crazy Tumbling Toms), but all are green. Can we wait three weeks?! We are dying to begin our daily tomato sandwiches.

In happier news, our beans (the bush ones, not the pole ones) are ready to eat, as are our zuchhinni and squash. We've also had some lovely swiss chard and herbs lately. When our sink gets fixed (it has a clog somewhere in the pipes), and I can get back into my kitchen, I will make some beans with a little butter. Summer!