Veggies All Around

I feel a bit guilty going out to my main garden. I’ve done very little but obsess and critique the weeds that have been so prevalent out there. AND I’ve been so devoted to the greenhouse beds, watering them every day, pruning the tomato plants, oohing and aahing over the carrots, cucumbers, and very first tomatoes… heartbroken over the blossom end rot, just way too invested.

Then I go out to the main garden and one day after the first tomatoes in the greenhouse (July 11: Bloody Butcher), I find two lovely ripe tomatoes. I was even neglectful about labeling in the main garden, since those seven tomato plants seemed to have all but completely died in the greenhouse before they were transplanted. But this one looks like a Principe Borghese.

In fact, everything is going well out there. The beets, which would have liked more watering and a little more thinning, are emerging from the ground at “salad” size. The peas are going crazy, mostly snow peas, and require picking every day. Same with the first green beans, the bush beans (yea! no rabbits!) and the zucchini.

So tonight I put together the first major stir fry, a fried rice version with some leftover rice and two farm fresh eggs (still not mine). In addition to beans, zucchini, snow peas, radishes, and carrots, I used a few pieces of broccoli that were hanging around, garlic scapes and a small head of fresh garlic (harvested Monday). There was leftover red onion that needed to be used, or I would have resorted to the shallots I pulled last week. Oh, and there was one large-ish (ignored!) shishito pepper I cut up, too.

It’s heating up out there, and that means the weeds are slowing. Not stopped, and in fact tomorrow when it’s cool I’ll spend a few more hours weeding, even vinegar-salting some more burdock and weedy areas between the beds. But more and more I am looking at the beds themselves. The garlic bed is harvested, giving me lots of room to plant something for fall… more beets? some spinach? Carrots? Then again, there is more space in the greenhouse opening up, too…

(Tomorrow: pizza night! Dough rising in the fridge now.)