A dear friend recently asked me how my garden was doing, and it made me realize that I’m not giving credit where it is due – I may yap about my garden all the time, but really I’m just consuming the fruits of my dear husband’s labour. I may occasionally water the garden when he’s short on time, but he’s the one doing the heavy lifting! In my opinion, we make a great team – he makes sure there are always fresh herbs and veggies available, and I’m always looking for creative ways to use them (or in the case of our peas this year, who to share them with!).
I find that my CSA deliveries get a bit boring in the summer once our garden kicks in – I end up ordering a lot of fruits or just stick to the basics (thus the lack of CSA delivery posts in the last few weeks).
This year, our herbs include Genovese basil, cilantro, rosemary, dill, mint, garlic and oregano.
We’ve planted sugar peas, snap peas and heirloom radishes which we’ve already begun to enjoy, along with our strawberries (which survived after being transplanted from the ground into a planter last year). The radishes we planted were from a mixed heirloom variety pack, so each one you pull from the ground is a surprise. The first batch of strawberries this season weren’t that sweet, but the ones we’ve picked during the past few weeks have been amazing.
From the nightshade variety of vegetables, we planted tomatoes, eggplant, tomatillos, poblano peppers and a few varieties of chill peppers. We planted two varieties of tomatoes, and a third plant came up on its own from last year’s garden. The ones we planted intentionally are two heirloom varieties – Paul Robeson, Orange and Green Zebra; the third plant was a low-acid yellow tomato, which always yields so much fruit (and keeps coming back each year – we planted this tomato 2 years ago, and it is the second time seeds from the prior year have popped up into a surprise tomato plant. We planted our tomatillo plants from seed, and most of the seedlings survived – as a result, we have five tomatillo plants in our garden – I see lots of salsa in our future. We also have two types of eggplant – an Italian and a Japanese variety.
We also planted Armenian cucumbers, carrots, beets and zucchini. Our garden has so much going on this year – I’m guessing that in a few weeks, I won’t be buying many vegetables at the farmers market.
My Vegetarian Kitchen 
Nice! How do you keep your cilantro from bolting in the summer heat? Mine never lasts all summer because as soon as the hot humidity kicks in it starts bolting and dies 😦
I don’t think there is a way to prevent it – just keep planting more seeds every couple of weeks so you have a reliable rotation. Also, we let one of our plants get very mature so it produced a lot of seeds last year – set us up for this years planting.
I found that link to nightshade information to be very interesting. I have a wild nightshade in my yard and now I’m a bit reluctant to eat it after reading that.
In my opinion, it is all about everything in moderation! These vegetables also have a great number of nutrients that are beneficial as well, so I won’t be quick to write them off. However, because there are concerns about their inflammatory properties, I’ll just stick to having these vegetables when they are in season.
Wow, you guys have really expanded the inventory – that’s awesome! I never noticed that Randeep’s thumb was so green. 😉 It’s always a surprise to me how readily some heirlooms will reseed. We had a golden cherry German heirloom at the farm called Blondkopfchen (little bites of sunshine, grows in clusters like grapes) and they spread themselves throughout our farm property via old greenhouse soil. It was always a nice surprise to discover a pile of them in the middle of a weedy field. Keep up the good work!