Mid to late June is sort of the limbo of the growing season. There isn’t much in the way of produce coming from the average garden (unless you have a greenhouse or cold house, in which case, you lucky devil, you). Those tomatoes you see at the Greenmarket nowadays are freaks of nature, they don’t grow this early, but the local farms outside the city take advantage of indoor facilities equipped to grow early yield tomatoes for impatient city inhabitants. Don’t feel discouraged yours haven’t popped into being yet. It may be my imagination, but the ones I’ve sampled so far aren’t particularly flavorful anyway. The only thing coming in at the moment by the bucketful are strawberries, and I highly recommend you go out to your local market ASAP and grab a quart. Nothing beats a local in season strawberry.
In my own garden, I’m tracking the progress of all my little seedlings, watching them steadily bloom and grow into delicious culinary acquisitions. Here’s a run down of the progress so far:
The Big Box: My fava beans are producing enormous bean pods, jutting out at odd angles on the thick stalk of the plant. I accidentally burned a couple of plants by using too much homemade insect-killing soap. Lesson learned, don’t go over 1 tbsp. of dish soap per gallon of water, and don’t overspray either, the leaves are very sensitive to the drying effects of the soap and will end up with burn marks. I’m still having issues with black aphids, but luckily, they don’t tend to come back to the places I’ve sprayed, preferring instead to congregate on new shoots my favas are sending up (they seem to send up new plant stalks as soon as the mature stalks finish bearing beans, thus prolonging my fava bean production!). My carrots are rocking, I recently thinned out quite a few baby carrots, to find colors of white, orange, and purple. I cooked up the babies in some vegetable cous cous and they were fabulously sweet.
My arugula has completely gone to seed, as arugula does, but luckily, it doesn’t change the flavor of the leaves (usually when a lettuce goes to seed, it produces foul tasting bitter sap within the leaves, rendering them inedible). I’ve sampled a few seed pods as well as the flowers and leaves and they all carry the delicious peppery flavor of arugula. I threw some leaves and pods on top of my homemade pizza for a fantastic twist on an old favorite. I’m watching closely for the arugula to dry out so I can harvest some seeds for another planting, but this constant rain isn’t allowing that to happen just yet.
The strawberries have picked up flower/fruit production in the last two weeks, but I don’t have high expectations for these guys: strawberries aren’t supposed to bear in their first year, but I’m letting them do their thing and checking regularly.
Nasturtium BloomContainers: My nasturtiums bloomed today! I sampled one of the flowers and found a deliciously complex flavor that ended with a distinct peppery bite. Nasturtiums are a cousin of watercress, I’d compare the flavor to that, but spicier.
My cilantro is growing steadily taller and thicker; I look forward to overusing it this summer in various recipes!
My back container, which I originally planned for beans has had a disappointing yield of one bean plant, and a bizarrely abundant yield of lettuce, which seeded itself from last year’s puny planting. Kate generously donated five eggplant seedlings to me, so I placed three of them in the bean box and moved it into fuller sunlight, hoping the growing curse will be broken without the box being stuck in the shadow of the Big Box.
My 7 types of heirloom basil are also taking off; I had to thin a few seedlings, but being one who hates to waste a good seedling, I stuck a few stray basils in a few planters that had room. I can already spot Thai basil and Dark Opal basil among the myriad plants.
Heirloom Basil: Can you spot all 7 kinds?The Kitchen Experiment™: I may have overcrowded and underestimated my beans. I now have four black bean plants and four garbanzo bean plants in a very small space. The white beans did not yield at all, but I have a feeling that’s because I planted baby white beans, which may be underdeveloped when harvested. In their stead I planted several haricots verts, five of which sprouted. They’re all somewhat small, especially when compared to Kate’s bean monsters, so I’m worried I may need to separate them to give them more room to grow. Or, I may just have bean envy.
Tomatoes: So far my direct-seed tomatoes are looking tall and healthy. I made the mistake of removing the bird netting from their container, as they were getting a little too tall for the cover. Returning the next day, some foolish bird had pulled up half of the seedlings, ripped off the leaves, and left the roots lying pathetically in the container. I say foolish bird because tomato leaves are poisonous, to humans, animals, bugs, and definitely birds. At least this particular menace Darwin’d itself out of existence, never to eat tomato plants again. I grabbed the large rotund plant support I bought to stabilize the tomatoes and positioned it in the container, then made a makeshift tent of bird netting over the first ring level to protect the growing seedlings.
As a side note, it’s fascinating to observe how the wildlife of the city is so unused to nature that they will target plant life in a desperate search for food with no instinct for what is lethal and what isn’t.
So far, so good in the garden realm. Stay tuned!
-Jen Rock
Friday, May 6, 2011 at 4:53PM 
The garden is making steady progress, now that the weather is warming. Leafy greens are coming in strong, along with a handful of French breakfast radishes and a ton of volunteer mint. My Fun Jen frilly bok choy is thriving, it'll be a good year for stir fries. My carrots and quinoa have started to sprout, and my Brussels sprouts are really starting to leaf out. In the herb bin, little is sprouting, but I transplanted my one successful lemon balm seedling, and my one successful parsely, which are both doing just fine. Cilantro is coming up strong, and I think I spotted one or two dill sprouts. Fingers crossed!
