2010 Garden: Week 6

This post is a bit late, but here is the garden update from last week...


The good:
- The weeding is getting much easier these days (probably due to our summer drought right now)

- The pole beans took off. We put in taller bamboo stakes last week and the beans have grown higher than the stakes already. I am definitely growing pole beans next year! They take up so little space and yield lots of beans.

It's hard to tell from the photo, but on the left side the beans were halfway up the 4 ft trellis and on the right they are off the 6 ft poles.


- Our peppers are growing, slowly but surely! Jon and I are pepper-holics, so we planted 14 plants this year. We could eat these forever and never get tired of them (raw with hummus, on sandwiches, in salads, in stir fry, roasted, and so many other ways)


- We got our first banana pepper. I love the color of these.


- Our kale is looking so big and leafy. We made kale chips last week and they were surprisingly almost like regular potato chips. If you do make them, make sure to cook them long enough. The longer you cook them, the crispier they get.

- I finally got around to planting more seeds: 3 rows of radishes, 1 row of spring onions, 3 Swiss chard, 4 bush beans, and 1 row of mesclun. I'm trying to fill up some of the empty space in the garden.

The bad:
we lost a few plants (spinach, mustard greens, mesclun, bok choy) due to bolting. This happens every year and I never seem to find the "perfect" time to pick plants that can bolt. I'm afraid to pick them too soon because they might be too small so I end up waiting for them to grow fully and miss out on them completely.

The unknown:
Are these beans too small to pick? They are long already but super skinny.
 

The misc:
- We added two new plants to the garden last week, a nasturtium (for a spicy salad kick) and an heirloom chocolate cherry tomato. It's a little late for the tomato plant, but we had a spot open up in the garden (thank you, bolted bok choy) and added it to the mix. The tomatoes will be small, so hopefully we'll get a few by the middle of August.

The links:

- We tried roasted radishes last week (instructions seen in the NY Times here). They were so delicious! I'm hoping our new crop of radishes grows soon so we can have these again.

- Check out this gorgeous kitchen garden. I'm drooling!
- Martha Stewart has a free printable label for frozen fruits and veggies.
- have you heard about Basil Blight? I'm checking on my plants every day now.

- preserving herbs. I'm going to miss having lots of fresh herbs to choose from throughout the winter.
- a gorgeously photographed local foods recipe blog, Straight from the Farm