Fresh From the Farm in the Last Few Weeks

In the last few weeks of summer, between planting for fall and waiting for warm weather crops to ripen, other urban farmers help supplement my garden.

I was given some lovely purple and green Romano beans as well as various squashes and zucchini.  Zucchinis are amazing. They seem to grow about an inch a day in hot weather hence all those jokes about not leaving your car unlocked in August lest someone sneak zukes in there.

I also got some lovely bluish green and light brown eggs from Thom's backyard coop.  I remember when I was a kid and we kept chickens, my brother and I refused to eat eggs from chickens that we knew.  Kids are dumb.

 

Tomatoes are finally starting to ripen, though mostly its the little cherry ones, and rainbow chard and Tuscan kale are growing again after I fenced them off from the hungry deer. New this week are these volunteer Yukon Golds.  I didn't plant them but apparently when you plant potatoes somewhere, you never end up harvesting them all so they come up year after year.  Digging up potatoes is just like being on an Easter egg hunt.  Each time you turn up one of these little orbs in the dirt, it's a thrill, even when they're only the size of your pinky nail.

While it still seemed like summer,  I planted kale, spinach, salad mix, and more chard, and those have now become seedlings.  A bunch of the seeds that were harvested from a friend's Chinese lettuce harvest didn't grow at all so I'm not sure how dependable it is to harvest your own seeds.  I'm getting ready to harvest the potatoes that I actually planted, so stay tuned!