Obviously, i love to garden. But it does take time, effort and planning. At this time of year things are ready to be harvested, other things are finished so need to be pulled so new crops can take their place. You need to fertilize crops, weed, prune, weed, plant, weed, weed, weed, weed, well, you get the idea. I grow a lot of food, not just to enjoy now, but so i can have organic vegetables during the winter as well. Preserving your garden harvest takes time as well, which is in very short supply at the moment. However, you will be so glad you took that time this winter, when you take out some of your own grown kale, or beet greens, tomatoes, or chard to make a meal. The photo is of my shelling peas, i freeze my peas, as well as chard, kale, collard, beet greens, as well as pestos of all kinds. Vegetables need to be blanched before they are frozen. Even after you harvest your vegetables, enzyme action is still occurring within the fruit or leaf. This will break down the cell structure and make the vegetable less and less tasty as time goes on. To stop this action you blanch them. All this means is putting your washed vegetables in boiling water for a certain amount of time. For shelling peas (shown above) it only takes 1 1/2 minutes. Then you drain the peas, and either put them in ice water, or run cold water over them for the same amount of time you blanched them. Drain again, put in a plastic bag and vacuum seal it. Mark it with what the vegetable is and the date, that's it! Kale and chard take 3 minutes, collard 4. A good guide to how long to blanch vegetables can be seen at  http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/freeze/blanching.html   Yesterday I cut up the last of my garlic scapes and made pesto. Then i shelled peas, and blanched and froze shelling peas and sweet snaps. I also washed and blanched kale, chard and beet greens and froze those as well. I'll be really happy i did that this winter.

So, BOOM! it's summer! We had a cool spring, but once we offically entered summer, it came in in an instant. It's hot, humid, and wonderful. My plants that i kept under a row cover till a few days ago, are now too big to be under the row cover. In this bed you can see chard in the front, white russian kale on the left, hot peppers in the middle, (which were under the row cover and are full of blossoms) and onions on the right. Onions are heavy feeders like garlic, and like garlic they like a fertilizer high in nitrogen. If you're growing onions, feed them every 3 to 4 weeks with a high nitrogen fertilizer. I use a fish fertilizer, but as i've said before, they're not all the same. Make sure you look for one with a high first number. All fertilizers will be labeled with 3 numbers. They stand for N (nitrogen) P (phosphorus) and K (potassium). Always in that order. So if you find one that has the numbers 5 - 1 - 1, that means it's mostly nitrogen with just a little bit of phosphorus and potassium, and that's just what your onions want!

I've had row covers on some of my tomatoes, eggplants, hot peppers and basil. Now they're getting too tall for the support hoops i have and the weather is finally warm enough to take them off. I was amazed at how large my grafted tomato plants were. In this photo, on the right is a cherokee purple tomato plant. It looks really good, it's starting to bloom and it's healthy and fairly large for this time of year. On the left is a grafted caspian pink tomato plant. Both seedlings were the same size when i planted them. When i took the row cover off the caspian pink i was floored! It's twice as large as the cherokee purple, is fuller and has a lot of flowers on it. We'll see how things progress during the season, but grafting is looking better and better to me. It takes some time and effort, but when you have a short growing season, you want every advantage you can get. To have my tomato plants this large, means i'll be harvesting more tomatoes from this plant, than i will from the plant on the right. More fruit in less space, is always a good thing in urban gardening.

This is a very busy time, the garden needs constant attention. Weeding, feeding and taking care of all your plants. I grow a lot of food, and I like to preserve it for use in the winter months. Preserving takes time, and that's not easy to find at this time of year. Even so, it's worth it! Here are strawberries I harvested at a couple of gardens. I washed them, crushed them and cooked them down to make strawberry jam. The strawberry on the right is all misshapen. It's called a fasciated strawberry. It looks as if a few strawberries had fused themselves together. This is usually caused by cold dry weather during the fall. There is another type of misshapen strawberry called a nubbin, it's tiny and looks as if the strawberry never grew to size. That condition can be caused by cold injury during flowering, or deficiencies in the soil, particularly a lack of calcium or boron. If it's been a very cold spring, and you had a hard frost, then you know that's what caused the strawberry to deform. If you're not sure, you should get your soil tested. You should get your soil tested every 2 to 3 years anyway. The most important thing in having a successful garden is soil health. You can't know what your soil lacks, has too much of, or what the pH is, without a soil test. I'll talk more about how to take a soil test, and where you can send it in another post.

 This is my garlic with the scapes out and ready to be cut. Garlic scapes are the flower head of the plant. Most hard neck garlics put out scapes, while most soft neck garlics do not. You don't want to let the plant flower, it uses too much energy from the bulb, and that's what you're growing the plant for. So, you want to cut off the scapes, but you don't want to do it too soon. If you cut the scape too soon, the plant will try to put out another one, which again, uses too much energy from the bulb. Wait till the scapes are long and twisty, when they look like the photo above, then cut them off, be sure to cut only the scape and not the leaves, the plant still needs those for energy for a bigger bulb.

This photo shows some of the garlic scapes i harvested the last 2 days. Garlic scapes are really delicious. You can cut them up and use them in a saute, or raw in a salad. I like to make a pesto out of them. I cut up the scapes, put them in a food processor, add olive oil and sunflower seeds. I use sunflower seeds because pine nuts are so expensive, and i think sunflower seeds are a close approximation for pine nuts. I process all that, and put it in plastic containers and freeze it. It keeps really well and I get to enjoy it all year long. Garlic scapes have a mild garlic flavor, nothing close to what the bulb tastes like. If you've never had them you should try them! Most farmers markets will sell the garlic scapes, and in the northeast they'll be out now. The garlic itself won't be ready to harvest for another few weeks, but once you cut the scapes, it won't be long till the garlic is ready.

Working in a garden is, well, work! Beginning in February i start my seedlings, then it's planting in the garden, seeds, then plants, tending all the small growing plants. I love it, it's wonderful to be in the garden even when it's not producing. Then, things start to grow, seriously, and you can start harvesting. Small amounts at first, and then it seems like it explodes, and this is just the first small explosion, it will build and build all through the season. Today's harvest includes mature romaine lettuce, I thinned out my red russian and white russian kale, they're pretty big even in this immature state. Got the last of my baby bok choy, a few beautiful strawberries and my first garlic scapes! Garlic scapes are the flower head of the garlic plant. Most soft neck garlics don't produce a scape, but all the hard necks do. You want to cut off the scapes before they flower, that takes too much energy out of the garlic bulb and that's why you're growing the plant, for the blub not the flower. You want to wait till the scape is all twisty, if you cut it too soon, the plant will try to put out another one. I'll talk more about garlic and scapes in my next post. Right now, i'm going to go make some garlic scape pesto, it's so good and i just ran out of the stuff i made last year, so glad they're back!

With our late cool spring, i thought the pests and diseases would be a bit late this year as well. Unfortunately it seems to be the opposite. I've been asked by several people here in CT, as well as in New York, New Jersey and even in NC about what is attacking their brassica crops. It's the cabbage worm. Usually about an inch or so long and green in color, you can sometimes miss it because it's almost the same color as the leaves. It attacks mostly brassica plants, kale, collards, cabbage, broccoli.. The adult is a pretty little white butterfly with 2 black dots on either side of it's wings. One very good method of control is to use a floating row cover on your brassica plants. All brassica (with the exception of broccoli) are biennial, which means they go to seed the second year. With broccoli we are actually eating the undeveloped flower head of the plant. If you want to save seed of broccoli, or second year cabbage or kale, don't use the row cover; but if you're looking to harvest food for yourself and not feed this insect, the row cover will prevent it from attacking your crops. Cabbage, kale, broccoli, don't need to be pollinated so there's no harm in leaving the row cover on until you're ready to harvest. If you already have this pest, then the row cover won't do you much good. The best organic method is to look on the underside of leaves for eggs. Most insect lay their eggs on the undersides of leaves (with a few exceptions). Pick off any cabbage worms you see, and kill them, either by stepping on them, or you can put them in a bucket of soapy water and dispose of them later.