Reds and Greens: Garden Update
A brief update on my garden for those who might be interested. No before and after shots, that’ll come. Everything went in on the May long weekend and since then Toronto has had a wonderful mix of heat and rain (less wonderful if you’re human…) which has helped my garden ‘explode’.
And so we’ve been able to harvest our first bounty from the allotment garden! Mixed greens and lettuce… and one radish!
I was also given some red amaranth by my garden neighbour who grows big sections of it for market. A totally new vegetable for me, I went with this recipe for stir-fried amaranth, which didn’t seem too far from his general directions (“cook it with some ginger, garlic and hot pepper”), and it was super tasty!
What all went into the garden?
- Roma tomatoes
- San Marzano tomatoes
- Heirloom Bloody Butcher tomatoes
- Mix of heirloom, various coloured, cherry tomatoes (we’ll see which colours come up!)
- Ring of Fire hot peppers
- Tabasco hot peppers
- Basil
- Green beans
- Mix of various coloured heirloom beets
- Mix of heirloom coloured carrots
- One lonely jalepeno pepper
- Cilantro
- Kale
- Mix of heirloom coloured swiss chard
- Lettuce mix
- Mesclun mix
- Pickling cucumbers
- Marketmore cucumbers
- Black beauty zucchini
- Calendula
- Wild mint (taking over small patches…)
- Radishes
- One pretty purple ornamental hot pepper (Black Cuban, I think)
I also have a small plot (25 sq ft.) at a community garden started at our church, there I have:
- Habanero hot peppers
- Thai hot peppers
- heirloom mixed colour carrots
- Cilantro
- Chamomile
- Some flowers planted by my little girl
In the backyard I also have some herbs growing:
- Big patch of dill
- Oregano
- Thyme
- Basil
- Rosemary
- 2 of our heirloom cherry tomatoes
- wild strawberries
- mint
- chocolate mint
- a green bean Daija planted
The backyard has always done poorly between lack of sun and squirrels so we’ll see how that goes. All in all, it’s been a productive start to the summer!
