Hey folks! Just a quick post today to let you know what to expect tomorrow:
snap beans
golden crookneck summer squash
garlic salt
fire salt
produce bags
Swiffer covers
dish cloths
skillet handle covers
There’s a 60 percent chance of showers tomorrow morning, but the dedicated market vendors are planning to set up! Come out during a break in the rain or enjoy a summer shower with us. Despite a wet forecast last week, we had beautiful weather for the market, so keep your fingers crossed and carry an umbrella (a sure way to discourage rain)!
My favorite month has drawn to a close, but as we plunge deeper into summer, the garden really comes to life. I can hardly believe it, but the corn is already taller than I am and decorated with purplish tassels. And although I’ve been watching the beans closely, I was still shocked to discover beans plump enough to pick today!
So, surprise! I’ll have green beans at the Broadway Community Market tomorrow – just a few, as the first harvest is always small. But there will be plenty more in the coming weeks. I also picked the last of the sugar snap peas this morning, so in a rare overlap, there will be both spring peas and summer beans on my table tomorrow morning.
I still have plenty of garlic salt, as well as the last couple bottles of fire salt and one lonely hot salt. In addition to my usual handmade items, I also plan to set up notecards featuring my husband’s beautiful nature photography.
Looking ahead, you can expect the first of the yellow summer squash next week and more beans. The squash plants are full of bright yellow blossoms and the buzzing of happy pollinators, and I spotted one baby zucchini too. We still have a couple weeks until tomatoes, though. And in the photo at the top of this post (a different perspective on the garden than usual!), you can also see lima bean plants getting ready to flower in the foreground and a tidy row of young okra plants. There is so much to look forward to in the garden.
This week has been all about garlic. As somewhat of a celebration of the summer solstice on Tuesday, I harvested garlic, loosening the soil with a digging fork and then exclaiming gleefully at the beautifully large heads I pulled out of the ground. Root crops are always fun to harvest, because you never know exactly what you’ll find.
After gathering and hauling the garlic out of the garden, I strung it up on twine and hung it in an outbuilding to cure for a few weeks. While you can certainly use garlic fresh out of the ground, the curing process dries the papery outer layers and allows the heads to be stored.
Those of you who follow me on Facebook may have seen that I’ve been working on a new product this week. On Thursday, with some of the garlic left over from last year, I made garlic salt! I had previously dried the garlic in a dehydrator, so all that was left was to grind it into powder and mix it with pink Himalayan salt. It smells so good! I like to use garlic salt in place of table salt on just about everything. Mmm, garlic.
This year’s garlicLast year’s garlicMixing garlic salt
So what’s growing in the garden? All the summer vegetables! Last week, I shared about all the flowers heralding fruits to come, and this week, some of those blossoms have already given way to baby veggies. Teeny tiny beans should be plumping up enough to harvest in another week or two, and the waist-high cherry tomato plants already have pea-size green fruits on them.
The corn is also lush and about shoulder height, though the winds from Wednesday’s storm knocked much of it over. (Don’t worry, it should recover.) And although the yellow summer squash doesn’t have blossoms yet, it looks like it will soon!
As I predicted last week, the radishes and lettuce are, unfortunately, done for the season. The peas, too, are finally slowing down, though I harvested a few pints this morning to sell tomorrow. Come early – they sell out quick! I’ll also have the new garlic salt, of course, as well as fire salt and all of my handmade items.
