As you can see they’re smaller than what you’d find at the farmers market or the store. But does this mean that they’re not done growing? Any tips on when to harvest them?

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Today at the community garden:

A couple weeks ago:

And earlier assorted borage pictures:

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The edibles:

I bought and planted seed shallots in the fall. (Really small shallots meant for planting. The bulb will divide and grow more shallots. Yum! I’m also curious to cook with the shallot greens. This is my first time growing them. I’ve been on a bit of an allium bender recently. (Alliums are the plant family of all things garlic and onion-like.)

Valeriana — also known as mache or lamb’s leaf lettuce. Tender and tasty. I can’t remember now whether I grew this from seed in the fall or got it as a start. My love for valeriana started on a Spring trip in Northern Italy a few years back. It’s a salad green that tolerates cold weather really well. It’s much more slow growing than lettuce though.

Artichoke! There’s nothing quite as gorgeous as a full lush artichoke spreading out its ample reach. This is a purple Roman artichoke (carciofo) in its second season.

This marjoram is going on several years, and is one of the plants I’ve had the longest. I have a special fondness for the plants that came over from my old house. There’s something sweet and reassuring about the continuity of a heart perennial.

Sugar snap pea! This is one of the gems I found while weeding today. A little sugar snap pea is coming up where I had grown them last year. Just one, so it prompted me to start some more from seed (they grow pretty quickly) to join this guy.

The flowers:

Crack poppy. Really. This is one of the California poppies that resurrected itself from where a friend planted them in the cracks of the patio last year. It has its first flower bud and I’m sure it will soon be boomin’. This one is close to two feet in diameter already. I love me some California poppies. Which is why they are poppy-ing (ha!) up all over my yard.

And speaking of poppies! I had one of my squeal in delight while weeding moments when I found this little poppy, which re-seeded from last year. Based on where it’s coming up I think it will be the incredibly gorgeous variety called Drama Queen. One of my favorites, I’m sure you’ll be surprised to hear.

One of my favorite things about this yard is all the calla lilies blooming prolifically in the spring. I mean seriously! This is just a few of them.

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I planted tulips bulbs for the first time in the fall. They’re starting to come up! I planted a bunch of random colors and varieties so I’m excited to see what they look like. (File this under joys of haphazard gardening.)

My backyard is also full of calla lilies — one of my favorite things about this time of year. I’m feeling extra good about this when I remembered how much it costs to buy them. (At this rate, I’ve got about $100 of super locally grown calla lily stems.)

This is the time of year when flowering trees are starting to bud out, with spray of pink flowers on otherwise bare branches.

Those of you on the Annie’s Annuals email list got the notice that it’s poppy time, people. I loved having crazy gorgeous varieties of poppies last year. I need to find better places to plant them this year though for maximum enjoyment. Check out all the poppy (papaver, if you want to be fancy) varieties that Annie’s carries.

It seems like it’s been a really dry winter so far. This is usually our rainy season, but I’m needing to water my plants a bit — especially the ones in containers — because the rains have only come in short spurts.

Those of you in colder climates can curl up inside with seed catalogs and daydream about your luscious garden this year. Either way, happy gardening!

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It’s fairly simple to make, if not a little time consuming with various chopping. I wanted to make enough for my dinner + some leftovers. So I used
- half an onion
- one celery stalk
- one carrot
- two garlic cloves
- handful of fresh parsley from my garden
- sour batard loaf
- one quart jar and one pint jar of my canned tomatoes (you can do the math on that)
- haphazard amount of chicken stock, probably around 3 cups

Savory Base
You start with a savory base of finely diced onion, carrot and celery, along with a garlic clove or two and fresh parsley. (Side note: the Italian word for parsley is prezzemolo. So fun to say.) Cook all those in a little bit of olive oil until they’re soft.

The Bread
I used almost a whole loaf of sour batard, but you can use any simple white loaf. I let the loaf sit for a couple of days. This stew comes from the tradition of the tavola povera, in which you make do with what you’ve got. This stew, like ribollita, was a way of using up stale bread. Now you know. Ok, so slice the crusts off the bread. (I was hungry while I was cooking so I ate the crusts like crackers. You could probably put some nice cheese on them too, and really snack it up.) Cut the bread in cubes. Put it in the pot.

The Tomatoes
I dumped my jars of whole canned momotaro + early girl tomatoes in the pot with the bread. Stir it up.

The Broth
Add in chicken stock or vegetable stock.

Cooking the Stew
Let it cook down for about 45 minutes. The flavors will mix and the bread will absorb all the delish.

See, it’s really pretty simple.

The recipe I use is Italy al Dente by the phenomenal Biba Caggiano, an old school (in a good way) chef who raised the bar for Italian food in my hometown.

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Growing garlic is super easy. (Read my previous post on this.) I don’t think you really need to buy fancy bulbs from seed catalogs, but do at least buy nice garlic from the farmers markets. (Apparently some grocery store garlic can be sprayed with something to keep it from sprouting that little green shoot.)  Break the bulb up into cloves. Plop the cloves into the ground. No need to peel them. And I have a feel that the skin helps keep them from getting waterlogged and rotting. I bought this garlic from the Ballard Farmers Market in Seattle when I was there in September visiting my BFF. This garlic is a hardneck variety — which means that it will grow a delectable scape. Most garlic is softneck, which stores longer, but doesn’t grow a scape. (Recipes here, here, and here.)  I was all giddy when I found this at the market. Hardneck garlic is also better suited to colder climates, so I stashed it in the back of the fridge for about 6 weeks. This is called vernalization — faking a cold winter for those of us in areas with mild winters.  I made a mental note to plant it right around Thanksgiving. So the long holiday weekend was a perfect time to check some things off my garden to-do list.

And hey, good news apartment dwellers, you can totally grow garlic in containers!

After weeding and doing some garden clean up I also harvested the scarlet runner beans that had dried on the vine. The dried pods looked a little funky, so I wasn’t sure how the dried beans inside would be…

BUT THEY WERE BEAUTIFUL! I love the mottled lavender and black of scarlet runner beans. I think that next year I’m going to use more garden space for beans to save and dry.

Handful of beans!

For some culinary nerding out on garlic you should also probably go read this.

Follow me on Twitter for more adventures in urban gardening: @baydirt.

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More on Twitter: @baydirt

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My squash plant got powdery mildew on its leaves in a serious way and I didn’t take the best care of it over the summer. (Bad gardener! More accurately, very busy gardener.) But still, my garden rewarded me for my efforts.

I have been loving delicata squash lately. I bake it with a little olive oil. And then mash it a bit. So good. Yesterday my friend Angela and I had it with our fancy Saturday lunch. Full disclosure, these are from BiRite. Next year, mine will be this big!

Clearly squash enthusiasm must run in the family. My mom had a whole huge pumpkin patch in her garden this year. And last weekend my nephew was super fascinated by this squash. (It was just a matter of time before baby nephew pics made their way on to the blog.)

There’s more good stuff on Twitter: @baydirt

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