What’s happening in the garden this week: Aug. 4-10

Keeping up with the bounty of summer

Summer harvest

The bounty from the summer garden is upon us. It’s a wonderful time even though It’s hard to keep up with everything coming into the kitchen from the vegetable beds. Our refrigerators are filling up with produce faster than we can come up with recipes to use it all, which means we’re starting to share with neighbors. The bush beans keep producing, with more on the way from younger plants in the bed. Ditto for the cucumber and yellow squash vines. The zucchini has been slower coming, though actually we’re getting just enough zucchini at the moment, thank you very much! We haven’t even been tempted to make zucchini bread though it’s early, I know. It’s time to start harvesting the celery and leeks planted in the spring. I pulled one leek and one celery plant this week to see if they were ready, and they are. I’ve not grown either in the past. 

I’ve harvested five nice-sized eggplants as well as an ongoing supply of kale, both curly leaf and Lacinato, and shishito peppers. We’re appreciating the joy of flash-frying salted shishitos in a hot skillet with olive oil. They’re ready in just a few minutes and go great with a martini. We’ve also used them as a topping on pizza along with mozzarella or feta and anything else we feel like adding. The lettuce plants I tucked underneath the peppers and tomatoes about a month ago are doing well in the heat, and we’ve been able to go out to the garden and snip off leaves for a salad each evening. With regular pruning our basil plants are bushy and flush, and we’ve made two batches of pesto so far this month. 

And now it’s tomato time!

Tomatoes

I’m going to pull one red cherry tomato plant which unfortunately has succumbed to disease, but we’re still getting lots of tasty yellow cherries from a new (to me) variety called Eagle’s Smiley I planted this year instead of Sun Gold. I’ll probably go back to Sun Gold next year but I took a year off because last summer’s plants underperformed (unusually so) and withered early. There’s nothing like Sun Gold, the backbone of one of our favorite pasta sauces, courtesy of Mario Batali. It’s easy and it’s fresh! The heirlooms are upon us and the kitchen counter is beginning to fill with ripening tomatoes. Because of squirrels and birds, for many years I’ve harvested tomatoes when they just begin to turn color and let them finish ripening indoors. It doesn’t affect the flavor and I get them out of the garden before our friends – who like to wait until the tomatoes are ripe and juicy – hold their own tomato tastings. So far I’ve harvested Black Krim, Rosella Purple, Moskvich and Upstate Oxheart tomatoes.  

Leeks

I planted two varieties of leeks on May 1, and they’re reaching maturity. This week I planted a new variety called American Flag started indoors several weeks ago. They were slow in coming and are a little small but hopefully will produce more leeks late in the fall.

More seed starting

I started more lettuce, endive and arugula indoors in the basement along with Bloomsdale spinach for the fall garden. They’ll go into the garden in about a month which I hope will not be too late. With shorter days and lower temperatures, it’s difficult to get the timing right when planting for the autumn. But seeds and potting soil are cheap! We’ll see. The lettuce varieties are: Yugoslavian Red Butterhead (a new one for me); Ithaca (a buttery iceberg that performed well this spring); and Hanson Improved. The endive is curlesi, a frisee style that always produces large, tasty heads that accent any salad or can be eaten on its own.

 Previous updates:

What’s happening in the garden: July 28-Aug. 3

What’s happening in the garden: July 21-27

What’s happening in the garden: July 14-20

What’s happening in the garden: July 7-13

What’s happening in the garden: June 30-July 6

What’s happening in the garden: June 23-30

What’s happening in the garden June 16-22

What’s happening in the garden: June 9-15

What’s happening in the garden: June 2-June 8

What’s happening in the garden: May 26-June 1