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.
Yesterday, I spent some time in the garden taking out the spent cucumber plants and the Red Russian Kale, which has a pest problem. I also transplanted my three pole beans (ha!) to make space for fall planting. I don’t have any hope for those. I sowed radishes, fall greens and arugula. I do not have too much hope because of the resident rabbit, but I plan to add row covers to perhaps helps some of these plants survive. It has been a strange year in the garden.
I also harvested some tomatoes and a monster zucchini (I had not been to the garden in three days).
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.
… and today’s harvest:
I harvested a nice bunch of overwintered leeks, a big head of lettuce and some volunteer hard-neck garlic that grew in the wrong spot. The strawberries are from a plot neighbor.
I spent three hours in the garden this morning weeding and pulling the mint that had taken over the better part of the back of my plot. I tied the asparagus and planted more Chiogga beets and a few dahlias, marigolds and cosmos. I also had meant to sow pole beans, carrots and more lettuce (in between the tomatoes so it can grow in the shade) but forgot, ha!
The garlic will be ready in a few weeks and I will need to harvest all the lettuce very soon. I also need to take out all those volunteer onions. The squash and cucumbers have settled in nicely, the chard and beets are looking good as are the new leeks. The kale is being eaten by something, but seems to manage to survive. Quite a few nasturtiums are coming up as well. The tomatoes have some flowers but not very many. I am worried that I overfertilized again, despite only using seaweed emulsion (once!) and sparingly so. Fingers crossed.
