Garden Update

My garden is growing up. After I harvested the last of my arugula over a moth ago I put in lettuce, endive, kale and spinach. I took out my barren pea vines and sprinkled fenugreek and cilantro everywhere. Now that’s all coming up and I harvested my first lettuce and kale two days ago. The lettuce is a little bitter but it’s hardy. And my lacinato kale is small and sweet.

I’ll juice it when I have more of it, most likely. To the right are the Indian plants—data—whose leaves have more potassium than bananas and calcium than almonds, I believe. The stalks are delicious, peeled and stir-fried. They taste like zucchini, meaning like not much, but a little sweet and juicy and they absorb other flavours well.

I’ve been harvesting my heirloom purple, orange and yellow carrots, their little heads popping up and my fingers reaching down into the soil to see how big the circumference is to judge when they should be pulled.

My tomatoes are having a rough time. On my balcony a dastardly squirrel keeps taking them, one at a time. I wake up every morning and swear at it. In my garden plot, however, the cherry tomatoes are yellow and finally the larger green ones are ripening to red (above). Hopefully we get some more heat before they give up and decide to stay their current colours. It’s a very late season. But the ones I have gotten have been more sweet than acid. I’m scared to leave them on the vine too long to get those huge, gorgeous heirlooms with cracks on the top that taste like juicy wonders. Better to eat them when they’re just really good in case something else gets them first while I wait.

I have so much purple and Italian basil. I’m freezing it all. The other day I pickled swiss chard stems because I’ve been eating pounds and pounds of it and some needs to last until winter. I also froze a lot of blanched swiss chard greens and mustard greens.

My red chili peppers are hot! My greens, too. Finally my green bell peppers are turning orange. Who knows if they’ll ever get to red? I’m planning to ferment them into a tiny bit of Thai chili paste.

I have three large green tomatoes on my balcony, too. One orange one in my garden plot, but they’re taking ages to ripen, like the tomatoes.

I got 6 giant cucumber. They were delicious. Two types—long, English cucumber, and field cucumber. I juiced one and ate the rest in salads. I have one more in the fridge.

My long, Japanese eggplant are perfect. They don’t get too large, but stewed with mustard seeds, chili, fish sauce, ginger, garlic, sugar and lime, they’re perfect. An Indian-Thai mix.

I have so much epazote. I’m going to use it in my dosa next week for my South Indian cooking class. Mexican meets Indian and good legume digestion for all.

And finally, I have more sorrel. I’m going to make a sorrel soup. It’s usually a spring soup but mine has lasted. It tastes like lemon and I made sure to freeze lots for the winter as a lemon replacement full of vitamin C and chlorophyll.

And today I foraged sumac. Is there anything else it could have been? The bunches were on a tall shrub (oxymoron?). I soaked the clusters in cold water for four minutes, sieved them, and dehydrated them before grinding them to a powder. The sieved liquid gets some sweetener and becomes either sumac lemonade or sumac jelly, as per the recipes in Foraged Flavors, the cookbook by the forager for restaurant Boulud in New York. I’m thinking both—and I’ll mix the sumac with under-ripe pears so I don’t have to add commercial pectin.

I was also gifted a hoya plant and put it out front with my struggling green peppers and zebra tomatoes. I hope it lives. It’s supposed to be beautiful when it flowers.

Next up, planting garlic for the winter. What else should I put in when I tear up my zucchini plant after it gives me my second fruit?