The Ping Tung eggplants will be roasted and turned into a salad with goat cheese and pine nuts, and the chard will be turned into sesame chard (a riff on sesame spinach) to accompany Korean steak, served with kimchi, quick-pickled carrots and rice tomorrow. The tomatoes (together with other previously harvested ones) will be used to make a simple sliced tomato salad with basil and parsley to complement Spanish tortilla with chorizo tonight.
I cut my second dahlia today. It is a gorgeous one (not sure what kind, it is neither one of the three varieties I ordered back in the spring), and I paired it with asparagus and mint.
I also harvested a ton of Swiss chard, three carrots (apparently only the yellow ones have made it so far from my rainbow carrot mix) and some tomatoes. Still growing are eggplant, some zucchini, leeks and the winter squash as well as much more chard and kale. There are also still a few tomatoes on the vine. All the seeds I sowed about a week ago (radish, arugula, fall greens) and the beet transplants have come up. Fingers crossed the bunny will leave them alone.
I took advantage of the cooler temperatures yesterday morning and spent two hours weeding my garden plot. My cucumbers are on their way out. They have started to wilt, I think I might have over-watered them. The green beans never made it. The seedlings are eaten by something/someone right after they emerge from the ground – I suspect the resident rabbit. The parsley died again. Like last year, the leaves turned reddish and pale and the plant basically disappeared. I ripped it out. I did some research and found that it might be due to a phosphorus deficiency. I will have to seriously amend my soil this fall. The greens are doing very well and the squash is looking good as well. The eggplants are growing nicely and the tomatoes and basil are also doing well. The first dahlias will bloom very soon – I am super excited. Soon I will put in fall greens and beets.
The first home-grown tomato of the year! It is a beautiful Dr. Wyche’s Yellow, weighing in at over 13 ounces. These are sooo delicious!
Finally! Two days ago, the water was finally turned on in our community garden. Yesterday, the kids and I spent two hours in the garden weeding, planting and watering. We needed to pull a large amount of onions to make space. They are currently curing on the front porch much to the chagrin of my daughter who has to live with the smell as her bedroom opens to the porch. I planted most of my seedlings: 6 tomato plants, 3 basil plants plus kale, chard, different lettuces and leeks. I also sowed nasturtiums.
We harvested some of the radishes. The peas never came up, not a single one but I know that some of the seeds germinated. I suspect the birds, which have been very active in the garden. The carrots sadly also never came up.
It is snowing today. A cold and wet day in the middle of spring. The forsythia bloom is almost over as are the daffodils. My seedlings are doing well under the grow lights and with the heat mat underneath. I currently have going: 4 tomato varieties (2 each), 2 basil, 2 parsley, a dozen or so head lettuces in different stages (half of them sown two weeks ago, the other half four weeks ago with the majority of the seedlings), 5 Tuscan kale, 2 hot Thai peppers, 1 eggplant (reseeded two weeks ago, only one of those plants came up and there may be a second one just poking out).
It is close to the end of March and I am starting to plan the gardening season. We had frost last night and will have more tonight and I am planning to get my peas in the ground in two days when it is a bit warmer again. I also started seedlings yesterday with my daughter. So far, so normal. However, the schools here in Boston have been closed for a week now because of Covid-19. The governor declared a state of emergency five days ago, restaurants are closed or do take-out only, people are encouraged to work from home, grocery stores now only allow a certain number of shoppers inside. The world is a very different place than just a week ago. Everyone is asked to stay home, which is hard for my two teenagers. My 17 year-old daughter copes with exercising, reading and asking me to teach her how to bake bread and how to grow your own food (she never showed much interest in gardening), and become more self-sufficient. So, we started by sowing seeds. For now, we started two types of lettuce (Bronze Beauty and Kagran Summer), eggplant (Ping Tung), Thai hot pepper (should have started those about a month ago, but alas), flat parsley (should also have been started earlier), basil, four types of tomato (Break O’ Day, Dr. Wychee Yellow, Green Zebra, Eva Purple Ball). We set them up under grow lights and with a heat mat in my bedroom.
We will need to adjust our community garden season as well. We will of course not have our annual spring meeting or our spring work day this year. We will need to think about disinfecting shared gardening tools and other surfaces.
So far, gardening has not been restricted by the city or the state, but should there be a “shelter in place” order in the future, we will likely not be able to tend to our plots. On the other hand, growing some of your own food will be more important this year than ever. The borders are shutting down, and migrant workers who pick most of our produce will not be able to enter the country and we will likely experience some sort of food shortage.
I will try to move as much as I can to container gardening at home, as this seems a feasible and safe option. For now, I am planning to grow herbs, tomatoes, lettuce, kale, chard, eggplant, hot peppers.
