Baguette with slow-roasted tomatoes/garlic/herbs, sheep feta, parsley plus freshly picked cucumber. All the veggies and herbs on this plate are home-grown.
Today’s harvest.
I harvested this monstrous cucumber today. It must have hidden under all the foliage and escaped my view. It weighed in at almost 2 lb. I also harvested tomatoes (3 lb.), a handful of pole beans, Chard and basil. The cucumber total for today was 3 lb. 8 oz. I will quick-pickle the big one. I have found this to be a good way to use cucumbers that have become to big to eat raw.
I also did some fall planting today and sowed golden beets (hoping I am not too late), fall greens (a mix), lettuce, arugula, mache and radishes.
Overall, I harvested 3 lb. 12 oz. of Banana fingerlings and 1 lb. 8 oz. purple Magic Molly. I had planted two rows of six plants of fingerlings and six plants of Magic Molly. Of the fingerlings, only seven plants total grew and only four of the purple ones. I laid the harvested potatoes to dry for a couple of days and will then gently rub of the dirt and store them for a few days until the time is right for a nice dinner of roasted potatoes.
I also harvested more cucumbers and more tomatoes and my first Kentucky Wonder pole beans. My eggplant is finally bearing fruit. I am very excited!
My plot this morning. A lot of bare space where I harvested the potatoes (left side) and took out the bush beans (right side in front of the pole beans). Time for fall planting!
I signed up to be one of the harvest volunteers at City Natives in Mattapan and today was my first day. We harvested (and weighed and recorded) tomatoes (8 pounds), eggplants, bell peppers, hot peppers, turnips, cabbages (Savoy and Oxheart), kale (Rainbow Lacinato and Red Russian) and 26 (!) pounds of callaloo. All of the produce will be donated to a nearby food pantry. I will be helping out once a week during the months of August and September.
Ping Tung eggplant 
Mixed peppers: Bell peppers, Anaheims, Banana peppers, Islanders, Little lemons, Serrano.
My share 🙂 (The tomatoes are from my garden).
EDIT: A few days later, I made this recipe. Yum!!! Served with rice, green beans with chili sauce and ginger chicken.
Cucumbers, Swiss Chard and tomatoes.
I had harvested really thoroughly the night before I left and took four cucumbers up to Maine where they went into a salad.
The cucumber is producing fruit like crazy. Those six cucumbers weigh in at 4 pounds. When I came to harvest this morning, the cucumber cage was toppled over and I had to stake it to fortify. Same happened to my Brandywine cage. Looking forward to the next few weeks of fresh garden produce.
The potatoes are getting ready to be harvested, and the pole beans (that I planted late) are flowering. The bush beans are close to being done, the cucumber is still producing heavily and my three tomato plants are heavy with (for the most part still green) tomatoes. The leeks are looking great and the kale is coming up. The golden beets I sowed sadly did not germinate as did the last carrot crop.
The pinkish-white dahlias are the only ones flowering so far – I have two of those. The two red ones are taking their time.
I need to weed and clean the plot and will sow fall greens in the next couple of weeks.
The first heirlooms from the garden are finally here!
This morning, after I watered my garden and locked the garden gate, I ran into a neighbor who asked me what I was growing in my plot. He also has a community plot nearby and mainly grows tomatoes and flowers. Time to take stock. Currently growing in my garden are: garlic, potatoes, leeks, carrots, beets, tomatoes, basil, cucumber, eggplant, butternut squash (I saw a tiny plant poking its first leaves out this morning, yeah!), Brussels sprouts, hot peppers, Swiss Chard, lettuce, kale (tiny seedlings are appearing), mixed greens (freshly sowed and just sprouting), radishes (just sprouting), pole beans, bush beans, peas, parsley, sage. Also dahlias, nasturtiums and borage. And mint and lemon balm, which keep creeping up in some spots. This morning I harvested garlic scapes, two big heads of lettuce and a lot of peas. I am done harvesting the first round of radishes and the rhubarb. When I looked at my plot while watering, not all that much seemed to be going on in my plot, but going through that list of plants makes me think otherwise.
Today, I spent 3,5 hours in the garden weeding and planting (bush beans, pole beans and carrots). I had neglected a large section of my plot that had not been planted yet (basically the entire right side of the plot starting at the pea trellis all the way to the fence) and it was overgrown with all kinds of weeds of the worst kind, including bindweed and yellow nutsedge. I have so much nutsedge in my plot, it is almost tragic. All of it was still small and growing and had not flowered or gone to seed. I used to use the compost from our community garden bins in past years and must have introduced the invasive weed this way. I got it all out (for now) and I feel very accomplished. The plot looks nice and clean. I also laid a new brick/paver path down the middle. Now I need to get more hay or straw to mulch the garden as the salt marsh hay cover is getting thin in some spots. No sign of the squash or cucumbers yet. I hope my direct sowing method worked. The nasturtiums I planted the same day are coming up, they are still tiny, I did not see them two days ago. I also hilled my potatoes today and they are now at ground-level. I took out the kale I direct-sowed a while ago. The plants were scrawny and chewed up. I will try to get some transplants. I also harvested some radishes and rhubarb.
I have been volunteering at the greenhouse at City Natives on Tuesday mornings. I had done that years ago and started again this spring. What a magical place to be, especially during our cold and wet spring here in Boston. Those tomato seedlings in the picture above smell so lovely – the smell of summer! I love helping to take care of the seedlings in the greenhouse and hoop house and the vegetable beds outside. Especially, since I did not start seedlings myself this year and my garden is just waking up after a very long winter. So good to get gardening again!
City Natives is an educational urban farm, run by The Trustees of Reservations. The farm runs classes on-site and throughout the city, teaching urban gardeners anything from garden planning over pest control to foraging and bee-keeping. Most of the seedlings will be sold at two plant sales, at City Natives on May 12 and on May 19 in the South End.
