herbs – Harmonious Belly

early july garden — The garden in early July

The garden is green and plump and everything is working toward blossoming and fruiting. I’ve got plenty of tomatoes showing up, though most are green. However there are a couple of plants – the Mexican Midget and the Tommy Toe – that have reddening fruit. It’s very exciting to see them progress.

tomato collage — Various stages of the tomatoes in the garden

You can see the Tommy Toe in the upper right hand corner and the Mexican Midget in the bottom left hand corner. The plant with the overabundance of blossoms is the Blondköpfchen – I am so looking forward to seeing the tomatoes that come off this plant. The bottom two images in the collage are the Stupice on the left and the Silver Fir on the right. I’m so pleased to see so many tomatoes growing. I really don’t think I can have too many tomatoes.

My squash plant – which threatens to take over the garden with its crazy vines – is starting to produce!

female squash flower — Female squash flower with fruit

As you can see, there is a small fruit at the bottom. This is a volunteer, so I do not know which exact variety it is, but I suspect it is a tromboncino. We’ll see. They get huge.

The male flower has a thin stem and dies off after its usefulness (pollinating the female) is used up. Kind of brutal, but that’s nature.

It’s hard to see the stem, but the flower is gorgeous. When the plant first started to flower, I thought the blossoms were so gorgeous. Then the next day, I’d go out and find them on the ground, seemingly cut off by some nasty. Turns out it was just the dropping off I mentioned above. Such a relief.

There’s some nice herb action going on at our place, too.

summer herbs collage — Many herbs grace our home

Friends of ours moved away (boo hoo) and offloaded their container herbs on me. They seem pretty happy on the back deck. There’s tarragon, thyme, rosemary, and basil. I’ve also got borage growing in the garden and they are flowering like crazy! I love their blue flowers.

Other stuff in the garden are melons, sour gherkins, peppers and ground cherries, which are coming along nicely. You can see more pictures in my Garden 2011 photoset on Flickr.

This post is participating in the inaugural Astoria Blog Carnival hosted by We Heart Astoria.

This weekend was hot – like summery hot, in the upper 80s. I was totally loving it, but it was a little bit of a shock to have to all of the sudden adjust to hot weather practices, like not exerting too much in the middle of the day. I’m used to more freedom of movement in the spring months, to be honest. Everything worked out, though, and I got a lot accomplished.

My week of meal planning and being on a running schedule last week was a rousing success! I have planned out this week, too, so we’ll see how it goes. I expect I’ll learn new things, and that it will be a success, too. I have planned to make one of my old standards for dinner one day this week, which is wonderfully flexible and open to improvisation, and I look forward to sharing about it here.

It’s a crazy week for me in the evenings, which means not much time to cook. So, we made 2 pans of lasagna today for ready-to-eat meals, which came out fantastic – these lasagnas are some of the best we’ve ever made.

two lasagnas

meat cooked

veggie cooked

This was the first time I’d used fresh pasta sheets, and I’ll have a hard time ever going back to dried. The sheets were made up the street by local pasta maker Cassinelli, the ricotta and mozzarella cheeses made just around the corner at a local salumeria. In one of the lasagnas I used pesto, which I made last summer from CSA basil, that was frozen until today. Overall the lasagna is almost creamy in texture, yet has substance. I will enjoy eating this lasagna throughout the week.

I was also able to make my soaked granola this weekend, which I’ll have with raw yogurt and milk this week for some breakfasts. This time I’m using cranberries and pepitas, along with apricots and hazelnuts, which should make for some interesting tastes. This is my favorite cold cereal ever and will be a great option for this coming week of warm/hot weather when I don’t want to heat anything up.

oven granola

nuts and seeds

fruit

Over the past couple of weekends, I’ve been digging in the dirt. I’ve added compost twice now to the garden plot, and really turned up the ground. My friend Charlene came over to help out, too, which was a lot of fun.

compost

I am so fortunate to have this space in which to garden and grow my own food. I also have a good sized planter on my deck, which originally was going to live elsewhere, but has found a home with me, which is filled with dirt and compost. There is a volunteer cilantro plant growing in it, and the french tarragon that was in there last year has new growth. I’ll sow some thyme seeds probably, or perhaps even some parsley. Photos to come.

I’m also surrounded by lots of sort of ambient greenery, which makes a huge difference living in a big city like NYC.

greenery

That’s the view from my back deck. So, so nice.

Tag: herbs

My Early July Garden

Kitchen and Garden Update