Kiwis in Bloom or the Summer Weeds are Here

Our summer weeds are here. It always seems like they burst forth,yesterday not there, today all over the place. I welcome the purslane it's nice in salads and my neighbors make an interesting Lebanese dish with it. In one of my Pueblo Indian cookbooks there is in which purslane is cooked like greens with bacon. That's purslane. This week its just an inch high next week it'll be a foot high and branching, then we start yanking it.
Hairy Galinsoga is everywhere right now; it's not edible, no great addition to salads. It reseeds like crazy. It's a challange to get it out and if for some reason one of the gardeners neglects their plot - it is all over everyone's plots. Pennsylvania smartweed, that funny pink beadlike flowering weed is maturing in the garden. I've heard that the folks at Tinnicum Marsh claim that a remedy for mosquito bite itch is to rub smartweed leave on the bite. That's about the only use I have for this pervasive little thing. The leaves have the same growth pattern and look similar to Vietnamese Coriander (Rau Ram) but they don't have that lovely scent, and don't taste great with nam pla and all.
My favorite book about our weeds is Weeds of the Northeast by Richard H Uva, Joseph C. Neal and Joseph M. DiTomasso http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=3025. One of the things I like about it is the detailed description of the germination and growth patterns and the photos of all of the stages of the weeds. It does not, however, discuss weather there these weeds are useful in any way. The weeds reach their tipping point when the kiwi and elderberry are in bloom. Now!

In the Elliot plot I've been radically thinning the turnips. We've had turnip greens almost every day this week. On Saturday, I made Indian food including Methi Aloo with the methi from the Elliot plot, a chick pea dish that I'm fond of, Madhur Jaffreys Lake Palace Eggplant, a wonderful, heady scented dish with kalonji and fennel in a tomato ginger sauce. I had to get more kalonji ( I thought I had a lifetime supply but it's hiding in the back of the cabinet) and of course saag aka turnip and kale thinnings. the methi is so easy to grow just soak a tablespoon or so of organic fenugreek seeds. plant in the garden and in a month you have methi. I do succession plantings and if I forget some, that's ok its a legume and a nitrogen fixer in the soil. I plow in under.

The Tomato plants are holding their own, I planted the tomatillo's last week. They got really sqaush bug eaten in my backyard waiting to move to the garden, their kind of pathetic. Some of last year's tomatillios have reseeded in the Elliot plot they were great last year (volunteers from the year before) so I might let some stay. They may be competing with my beans so we'll see.

We just had a lovely dessert of strawberries and cream. Sweet and jucey. They're really vigiorous I've picked about 2 quarts so far and there are more ripening.