Approach Of Summer

I made a mid day trip to the beach farm to harvest lettuce for the coming week and, as it turned out, to head off the growing crabgrass that loves eighty degree days and dry conditions.  I planted some of my remaining romaine and chard, although it is awfully late for these little starts. I expect they will bolt before they size up.

Milkweed grows at the edge of our plot, and I let it for the good it does and the harm it does not.

The garlic is now sliding into its summer appearance (not unlike flower garden in July), a tangle of less turgid, slowly yellowing to browning leaves. Please note the UFO in the upper left, above the neighbor's fertilizer bag.

And, as expected now that June is upon us, the scapes are pushing up, some more advanced than this Rocambole. This Friday I will harvest (and grill) our first scapes of the season.

The earliest of the early, the Asiatic "Japanese" or "Sakura," is cloving. Before this process, spring garlic looks similar to "green onions." These and the "Asian Tempest" will be ready in a couple of weeks.

Some romaine lettuce I've yet to harvest. I will probably take this on Friday. Romaine holds up to the heat well, and I think it makes it taste better.

This is a new type of romaine lettuce, flecked with red on bright green, that I grew from seed. 

It is awfully hard not to harvest these big leaves from the Iceberg lettuce. Inside, the head should form, but I've never grown this type of lettuce before and am not feeling its potential to do so. I may have to harvest this before it wants to bolt.

In the other plot there were three heads of what I mistakenly thought of as bolted lettuce. I pulled them up and threw them on the weed pile. I found another and tasted a leaf, and then it hit me -I've planted escarole! I left the three to wilt on the weed pile, figuring it a wash and left the fourth planted. After all my work was done I tasted a leaf of the still planted escarole, a leaf not all as bitter as expected. I grabbed the wilted from the pile and began to rinse the roots of soil, then pulled the remaining one and did the same, and bagged them all. Within the hour the escarole returned from the wilted dead, completely rejuvenated, the very Lazarus lettuce you see here.

And, in a neighboring plot, the one turned over by its new gardener after I planted peas, potatoes, and greens, there is a growing vegetable mishmash from which I harvested some pea shoots for today's salad.