Over the past couple of days I finalized my back porch plans. As usual there will be lots of herbs, which will make it easy for me to put the final touches on our family dinners. Specifically, I planted cilantro, Thai basil, Greek oregano, mint, sage, lavender, German thyme and rosemary. The sage and the rosemary are leftovers from last year that I overwintered in our kitchen, the sage is slowly coming back to life after I had chopped it back to a small stump. The mint is from my community plot, where despite my best efforts to eradicate it, it keeps coming back every year.
I also have basil in a big pot growing together with a hot pepper (Jedi) and flat parsley growing with a Japanese eggplant. In addition, there is a pot where I sowed butter lettuce and another one with rainbow Swiss chard. The last big pot is empty and will likely have a patio-style tomato.
With help from my plot neighbor David who generously offered to share his bounty. About a third comes from my asparagus micro-patch, seen below a couple of days earlier, the rest is from his patch. And this 
I have been volunteering at the greenhouse at 
My garden had a very late start this year. I just started planting seeds today, April 27, which I think is the latest I have ever started. We had an extremely long and wet winter, with sleet and freezing rain just last week. But now, spring seems to have arrived for good. Today I seeded carrots, radishes, beets, lettuce, peas, kale and Swiss Chard. Because of the birds that have been raiding my peas these past two years, I decided to try row covers this year, which I placed over my two rows of peas and the row of lettuce in between. We’ll see what happens.
Garlic
Freshly planted plot, with some leeks still standing from last season
Leeks … the only thing still growing in my plot. Today I spent a few hours in the garden harvesting my last carrots, parsley and kale and a handful of leeks before I did a final weeding of my plot and added a cover of salt marsh hay for the winter. I checked on the garlic and saw a couple of thin green sprouts.
I am sad the season is coming to an end, but it was a pretty good one. Tonight for dinner, we had roasted vegetables (the leeks, carrots and garlic came from my garden) with a smokey yogurt dip and salad (parsley from the garden). It always feels good to have home-grown food on the table.
September bouquet: dahlias, parsley, radishes and asparagus
Mini dahlia in soy sauce dish
Last night, we had the first night frost of the season and there will be a few cold nights ahead. I put all our houseplants indoors yesterday, but still need to clean up my plot. The nasturtium and dahlias look limp but all the veggies survived. The dahlia tubers will be dug up today and I will also harvest any tender greens from the plot and put the garden hoses away. The water in our community garden is now shut off. It is also time to clean out the plants in my containers on the porch and bring inside my herbs that I plan to overwinter: rosemary, sage, thyme.
Lightly frosted carrot leaves
Plot in early November: carrots, radishes, parsley, Swiss Chard, leeks, kale, chicory and flowers.