A Week of Firsts. First Pesto, Tomato, Garlic Chives, Beans.

This has been the week of firsts, the first batch of pesto, the first ripe tomato, the first garlic chive shoots and the first pole beans.

First the pesto. I love it and once the basil is big, I make it once a week.

I gather a big bunch of basil. This is good for the plants, they divide and grow more shoots.

The important thing about basil is do not let it develop seed heads. First you see a tight cluster of leaves tiny leaves, then before you know it the flower shoot sprouts.


When the seed head forms the plant sends all of it's energy into the seed formation.
For a long season of big basil leaves, pick, pick, pick.

I'm kind of a basic pesto person. Basil, garlic, olive oil, salt, pine nuts and a combination of Fulvi Pecorino Romano and Parmesan cheeses. I like lots of garlic and pine nuts. I don't use a recipe. I fly with the proportions and taste a lot. It goes something like this:

A big bowl of basil picked from the stems,
8 cloves of garlic,
1/2 cup pine nuts (at least)
1 cup of grated cheeses.

Whirl the garlic and olive oil in a food processor, add the basil in batches, add the pine nuts then cheese and salt remember, you can always add more. I like the whole wheat pastas in shapes. I like the way the pesto clings to the crevices. I boil the pasta reserving some of the cooking liquid. Toss it with the pesto.
Taste and adjust the seasonings adding more pasta water if the pesto seems too thick. I like it with a nice mixed green garden surprise salad - whatever greens are going in the garden, some foraged wild plants like purslane and dandelions (I've kept one dandelion plant going in the Chris plot for tender leaves), some nasturtiums, borage flowers, and sorrel. tossed with a simple mustard vinaigrette dressing.

My first ripe tomato isn't quite ready yet it's one of the rampo variety. It was quite pink so I picked it.

It seems somehow wrong not to let it get completely ripe on the vine but I have been the victim of the squirrel once too many times. You notice an almost ripe tomato, dream about is slice with fresh mozzarella and those big basil leave in the basil mint plot. Next day you go by and there it is either on the ground with big bites out of it or maybe still on the stem with little bites all over or the biggest insult is to arrive and there the little grey furry one is on the back of the garden bench munching away. pieces of the lovely tomato all over the back of the bench. Someone should invent little tomato cages that you put around almost ripe tomatoes. They'd have to be rigid and big enough to keep the squirrels clever little hands from touching the fruit. Day dreams.

I love garlic chive shoots.

The tenderer the better. I put a big cluster of them in a dry cast iron pan and roast them until their color turns bright green. Nice as an accent on a grated cabbage, nam pla based salad with Vietnamese coriander, some perilla and hot chiles. Chive sprouts are also great on pasta or over marinated roasted tofu.

The beans are coming in nicely though the tomatillo jungle has reduced their numbers this year. But I do love tomatillos. As I pull up the turnips I've been planting rows of bush beans to compensate some what.

Sadly, the Lebanese cucumbers were short lived. They were sweet and tender but got wilt fast.

Early Light, Cucumber, More Turnip and Mexican Bean Beetles

I walked into the garden, the usual Thursday, camera in hand, visit. I usually go to thee garden after work on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, skip Wednesday because of pottery class and return on Thursday with Georgia to do the photographs. This week I also went at 6:30 Saturday morning. Critter watch. I pick salad greens,herbs and leafy green vegetables every day, extra on Tuesday to get me to Wednesday. Early in the season, when there was constant rain, which was great except for the aching in the morning, I'd bring seeds and do succession sowing of lettuce, arugula, and radicchio. Now I usually do some watering in spots and a good soaking twice a week. I'll walk in start on the driveway side check out the herbs how is the tarragon doing, it's its second season. we used to have an established tarragon patch but the sage and Greek oregano over-powered it. I started these plants up front. The big competition is the lambs ears. They reseed and grow everywhere. I live the fuzzy texture and sagy green color. They are a great contrast to the nasturtiums with their tropical bright flowers round funky patched leaves like unusual geometry lessons. Anyway, the tarragon seems to have settled in alongside the marjoram and lemon thyme. I can never figure out what to do with these lemon-this and that herb. Not very thymey a little lemon pledge like. I like the yellowish varigated leaves though. the dill is coming along nicely,Ill resow somemore soon. There is parsley patches in two places and they seem to be thriving. The perilla, the perilla is aggressive, dark magenta and crinkely the leaves are almost iridicent. they are growing through the bamboo strucutre I built last year. It's weathered now, The Vietnamese coriander (Rau Ram) is pretty established under the shade slats. I go herb by herb then. In the chris plot the walking onions by the big boulder are rooting, creating the next generation. The chard is looking fine, the lettuce that I transplanted from the Elliot plot was doing well almost ready to start harvesting until... The cucumbers are flowering and climbing like crazy. I had a small one with dinner last night, tender and sort of sweet. I keep trying to train them up the trellis and they march across the plot towards the radicchio. Soon the red noodle beans will be climbing. The tomatillos are filling out their husks, the tomatoes are still green. They are at the stage where I need to carry strips of rags to tie them up anchor them to posts they are beginning to spraul. The tying and anchoring begins and goes on all summer.

In the Elliot plot the beans are flowering and the dreaded Mexican bean beetles have arrived. While I don't have as many plants as I like I still want those beans. I find that I need to do daily inspections to squash the beetles and their larvae, or else they chew away the leaves until all that's left is a lacey shadow of a leaf. The leaves turn brown the gardener gets frustrated and yanks the whole mess out. Gives up. I want those beans. I've pulled lots of turnips in the past week. One big bunch I roasted with lemon, garlic and fresh bay leaves ( my next door neighbor topped her bay plant to get it to branch, it was so tall that it touched the ceiling when she had it inside for the winter- I put the top in a bottle of water and I've been using the fresh leaves. Tonight I made another batch of Japanese pickles, Asazuke. Easy as pie. slice the turnips thinley rub with a tsp and a half of salt and half a tsp of sugar I crushed a dried red chile into the mix rubbed the spices in, put it into a jar and refridgerated it for an hour. Very crunchy and fresh. I'm doing succession sowing of bush beans as I pull out the turnips. Next I'll plant more chard and radicchio for the fall.
Georgia met a cat at the garden who didn't even wink when she did her grr woof, not quite a bark thing. the cat just sat there.

City Gardening or Where the Wild Things Are

Opposoms and Raccoons probably were always here from the time these gardens were fields and forests. Now we have a goundhog or a gopher, I'm thinking now that it's a gopher. I went to the garden this morning camera and hot sauce in hand. I approached the bench with an arm full of turnips when I saw the little critter out of the corner of my eye. It was in the Chris plot, ready to finish off the lettuce it only half ate yesterday. It didn't mind the water spraying at the end of the plot ( I like to give the plots a good soaking) but when I approached with camera in hand it scooted away. It went under Kirks fence heading toward Bruce's yard. It likes lettuce but didn't touch the arugula or radicchio. In one case the lettuce was in the middle of a bunch of arugula. We're looking into borrowing a trap to transport it to the park.

Where did it come from? Suddenly. This isn't Bucks County or Chestnut Hill. Fairmont Park is several miles of city streets away. Yet, here it is. In the Wilds of West Philly.

Strawberries Will Take Over You Have to Decide

The strawberries are suckering out of the Elliot plot and trying to root in the burlap. All of the plant in this plot came from the path of the next plot. I couldn't imagine at the time why there was such a dense planting of strawberries in the path, Now I know. My plan is to fill up some pots and get the plants to root so I can share them with gardeners who might want strawberries in their plot. You have to decide. They will take over. In fact in think I'm going to clear the end of this plot after the season and encourage the strawberries further along the edges.

Comfrey Tea for Tomatos

I'm making a comfrey compost tea for the tomatos. It was all the talk of an allotment list I subscribed to years ago, they swore by it. I've been cutting comfrey and stuffing it into a kitty litter bucket with a lid held down by bricks. After a few weeks a yeasty sluge forms, you add water and wait a few weeks and it's ready to pour around the tomatos.

Buzzing, Blooming, Climbing, a Riot of Activity and those Strawberries

As I approached the garden, opened the barn red gate, herb garden straight ahead, Alaska mix nasturtiums spilling over the rocks in the front with their abundant orange and yellow flowers I felt a sense of calm. After endless weeks of rain we are having some warm sunny days. Beans are climbing, tomatoes and tomatillos filling out.
In the Chris Plot, the sprouted cucumber seeds that my neighbor slipped me a month ago are filling in and beginning to climb. I have lots of little cucumber forming at the base of small yellow flowers. These are heirloom Lebanese cucumbers; best eaten when young and tender not much more than three inches long. I'll be harvesting some soon.

I planted some sprouted bitter mellon seeds but it looks like the @#$#% rolly pollys got to them. Their such destructive little things. In garden books they are described as harmless scavangers of rotted leaves. Well, they are a pain. They eat young plants. One year I had to put gravel around my peppers to keep them away. The weeks of rain have only encouraged them.

Some of my tomatoes are getting that yellowish blush that comes before turning red. Speaking of tomatoes and thing that go with tomatoes, the basil is growing nicely and should be pesto worthy in a few weeks, I've got the pine nuts ready.

I've planted lettuce in the cleared middle of the Chris plot. It's just sprouting. The fennel is ready to pick and the Swiss chard has been delicious. Chard was my Nanny Walters favorite vegetable.

Over the 4th I did some grilling. I made a lemongrass, nam pla, red onion, lime juice marinade and salad dressing. I used some of the last frozen hot peppers from last summer for zing, and some sugar to balance the sour. I have little ones coming along in the back. This salad was a mix of lettuces, radicchio, perilla, red mustard, arugula, rustic arugula (sparingly - its intense) tender dandelion leaves, mint, the last picking of lacy coriander leaves from plants going to seed, sorrel and an abundant handful of nasturtium leaves and flowers, and Thai basil- at last. Great contrast of colors from zingy chartruse sorrel, lacy light green lettuce to ruffley maroon perilla. To the nam pla/ lime mix I added the first little picking of Vietnamese coriander.
Mint has become an obsessive addition to my salads. I also put it on cheese sandwiches.

I feel like the beans got crowded out a bit. With crowding from strawberries, the tomatillos and the attacking rolly pollys I don't have as many plants as last year. I love beans. As I'm clearing the turnips I'm putting in bush beans called provider. In the Chris plot I put up trellising for the red yard long beans. I have to admit that I planted them because I thought they looked cool, very exotic.

The herb garden is flowering like crazy. In the medicinal triangle, the bergamot is almost five feet tall, a great huge flowering mass. Between the purple bergamot and the stinky pink clary sage the bees are going wild. They are equally engaged around the echinacea purpura growing through out the garden. The coriander is going to seed. As it dries the seeds fall and soon we'll have cilantro for salsa.

The turnips keep coming. Under some of the turnips I found beets. Surprise.