Kitchen Garden

It's hard to believe that June is almost over. The garden is definitely in full summer mode. Edward is watering almost every morning before work. The lettuces and spinach all started going to seed, and I pulled out the spindly remains of the spinach a few days ago. The later developing cauliflower aren't going to do much more than start to flower and will be pulled out soon too. In their places I am planning to seed swiss chard, the young tender leaves can be used in salad and mature ones eaten sauteed and sliced up and added to soups and stews, to replace all the wonderful lettuces and spinach that I hate to see go when the weather gets hot. I will also transplant a couple of the Asian eggplant seedlings that I have started in a protected planter box against the house into the garden.
I have two lush patches of overgrown arugula. They are really too big, that is strong and spicy, to eat raw at this point (alas, we love a simple arugula salad with a lemon and olive oil or red wine vinagrette), but I am going to try to salvage some of it by making arugula pesto. I plan to quickly blanch it first to tone down some of the heat and sharpness. I read about arugula pesto a couple of months ago on In My Kitchen Garden, the alternate blog of Susan of Farmgirl Fare, also a great find for fresh recipes and pictures of very cute baby lambs. Susan raves not only about the yummy pesto but about the instant gratification of growing arugula from seed in your garden. I definitely agree! She also offers a great idea and a scrumptious picture for arugula pesto pizza.

From our front yard garden.
The tomatoes don't last very long in our house,
but I've been saving up these first okra to sautee with cumin.

Edward pulled the first carrot.

Hmm, it's awfully dirty!