Beach Farm Sunday

The parsley is simply perfect, and I harvested a good amount of it to make a pesto with the garlic scapes from last week's harvest. Notice that some flat-leaf parsley seeds grew as curly-leaf.

The chard has finally taken off. We're now harvesting lightly.

I've been quiet on the leek front, but it's time to say something. They're getting bigger, not getting cut down by grubs any longer. Whew. I'm slowly mounding compost around them to "blanch" the stems, but I am inexperienced in the timing for this. Always an experiment.

Sundays haul. Damn, the snops (what I'm calling the group now, since 1/3rd grew as snow peas) keep on producing. I want to put in my tomatoes and will have to cut these down in the next week so I can plant the paste tomatoes before we head out to Minnesota. Same for the broccoli. It's mainly side shoots now and I really want to get in the beans, peppers and eggplant before our two week trip.

They're awfully tasty.

Last week I saw that these broccoli heads were ready for harvest in the tri-color mulch plot. I was so tempted to pick them, but didn't because we all know that as soon as you do, the gardener will arrive to pick them. Isn't it just the way, then, that these broccoli were not picked before going to flower! 

On this trip, we met the gardener, hand on hip, holding an arching hose, lazily dropping a cylindrical deluge over each plant. She said she was here and saw ready broccoli, yet did not pick! Oh, her surprise, a week later in this June warmth, that they have moved on. I told her to pick and eat anyway. She's lucky -no worms.

Then she mentioned her yard. What? Yard you say? She's not the first we've met here at the garden with a real yard at home, usually not too far away -the Rockaways, Canarsie, Bensonhurst. I guess folks don't want to mess up their yard with vegetables. Or maybe they just like the atmosphere -who wouldn't. Yet, I can't help but to think that there are those without their own soil who would make good use of a plot.