1st week of June 2010

Edible Landscaping After a week of dry weather that was perfect for hay-making, this week brought plenty of rain to replenish the fields and garden. We were able to plant popcorn, more sugar cane and a small patch of sweet corn just before one of the storms. The rest of the week we sat back and watched things grow, including the weeds. I think we will have our work cut out for us when things dry off a little. There was plenty of harvesting this week and on Tuesday I picked and washed over 50 heads of lettuce. It is in it's prime right now but with the heat I knew it would soon start deteriorating. My customers had abundant salad bags this week and I also made up bags of lettuce to take to the Green Pantry at the Orrville Salvation Army. My friends working with the Down To Earth Community Gardens in Orrville will be sending extra produce from their community plot to the Green Pantry and are encouraging others to do so also. I am thrilled to support a project that gets real food into the homes of those who truly need it and hope the bags of colorful homegrown lettuce blessed families. We are also harvesting beautiful heads of broccoli, onion scallions, chard, kale and radishes. I'm watching the row of blooming Sugar Ann peas and am looking forward to that treat next week. The yellow squash and zucchini are also blooming plus we are keeping a close eye on the tomatoes setting fruit.

Salad My edible landscape in front of the house is looking lush. I took a picture of the lettuce, greens and herbs before I started harvesting the lettuce heads. The tall feathery plants are bronze fennel, the borage is just beginning to bloom plus there is Bright Lights Swiss chard and an assortment of lettuce. It's a fun challenge to make veggies look beautiful enough to replace petunias. While you are making the effort to make things pretty, it's nice to reap the side benefit of eating the fruit of your labor. Now I need to decide what low-growing plants to use to replace the lettuce, perhaps nasturtiums.

I am enjoying the many fragrant plants in bloom with my all favorite being the pink ruffled old-fashioned grandma roses. What lovely aromatherapy! The mock orange blossoms are another old time plant with a heady aroma. Another fragrance that is common this season is garlic. Galic Scapes The plants are sending up their curvaceous flower scapes and we snap them off so more energy goes to bulb development. This is an excellent kid job and here is one of my scape pickers back from the garden. Some of the scapes went to the Local Roots market in bags, some spice up our stir fry and others will go in the freezer. Since we will have an overabundance of them (almost 4000!) a few of them were also used as toys. Our daughter and some friends made up games called the "Garlic Scape Long Throw" and the "Garlic Scape Toss." Their curly shape provide all kinds of unexpected flight patterns and lots of laughs. Maybe next year we will need to host the Garlic Olympics!