Garden Update

So……. yeah, we haven’t really posted in a while….. a long while……..The last time we posted, New England looked rather bare.

The Brookline Community Garden in March.

This is the community garden at Larz Anderson Park in Brookline.  We have had the opportunity this year to garden in it.

Things at present look rather different.  If you recall from our past post, our garden plot came to us utterly empty.  Well, we had something to do about that:

We built some raised beds. Hurray for impromptu carpentry skills!

We planted some seedlings at home. Tomato, tomatillo, eggplant and cucumber. Some of them actually did well, regardless of our really crappy setup in a northern window.

We seeded radishes, and peas straight in the ground. Some of the seedlings survived their transplanting into the garden- some did not 😦 .

We also tended to our balcony garden. We planted more alpine strawberries and annual herbs, and let the perennial herbs from last year take over. That’s our big fig plant to the left.  🙂

We let our kitties enjoy the amazingly warm and mild spring. Even more so on a heating pad. Here they are fighting over its rather small surface area. No, they’re not just being friendly.

We also began to enjoy some seriously good spring food. Asparagus, spinach, bacon, whole wheat toast, a farm fresh poached egg, and roasted garlic sauce. Nom.

We did something pretty awesome with our garden. The success of growing our peas under garden fabric (row cover white stuff) made us think our seedling transplants and bean plants might like some make-shift hoop houses made from bamboo sticks, clothes pins, and garden fabric. It has worked out very well.

Our fragile seedling tranplants appreciated this a lot. They were protected from the many many chipmunks that inhabit the area. They fared much much better than the poor cucumber transplants that we put in out in the open. We never heard from them again… But our tomatos, eggplants, tomatillos, beans and greens have been quite thankful.

Our peas are quite happy as you can see. Already blossoming! And getting along with its salad burnet neighbor pretty well.

We thinned our kale and salad burnet for a cute little first harvest. Kale on the right, sorrel in the middle, purslane and chard to the right.

Harvested kale and salad burnet. Mmm… microgreens.

We ate them as a delicious salad with the most amazing local camembert from Old Chatham Farm. How springy!

This Friday we had our first major harvest. One of our radish successions had come to ideal size- radishes about an inch in diameter and lovely looking.

We harvested radishes for dinner and some mint that has taken over this side of the community garden as a delicious weed.

The peas are looking happy. We were worried that they weren’t growing any taller. A quick search revealed our cultivar will only get 15-20 inches tall. So, they are pretty tall and flowering, with a few with little pea pods sticking here and there. Here’s hoping the crop will be a success!

Our harvest of radishes chopped up to make a radish and radish green pasta dish.

Radishes and tops from our garden, homemade spelt pasta from our grain CSA, with spring onion from Silverbrook farm, parsley from our balcony garden and parmesan cheese. Quite lovely.

We also celebrated with some delicious cooked rhubarb for dessert. We stewed it with some of our dried citrus peels and lots of sugar.  Nom.

We’ve been enjoying the local food popping out of the ground in our New England habitat. Not only from our gardens, but also the opening of the Allandale Farmstand, the beginning of the Copley farmers market, and soon the beginning of the Red Fire Farm CSA (and yes, I will be running it again this year, hurrah!) all have been making us very very happy.

We still have some frozen food, and pickles to get through before the height of summer, but we survived this spring as locavores very well.  Eating like locavore queens, regardless of a tough semester.

I leave you with this gratuitously cute picture of Fitzwilliam sleeping lazily in the heat on this lovely long weekend.

And that is the update.  I hope to give you more fun food and garden updates as late spring and summer rolls along.