Zucchini Attack!

So, I went out to the garden to pick one zucchini I knew was going to be ready today and look what I found!

There are also, of course, more forming. If you have never planted zucchini before, believe every story you have ever heard about them. You know the ones where people are giving their neighbors so much zucchini that the neighbors stop answering the door? Things like that...

Last year, our plants were attacked by squash borers towards the beginning of the season, but it is my hope that we will soon be dragging truckloads of zucchini to the food pantry.

Today is a good start! One of these small babies will be sampled by husband and I tonight and the rest will go to the pantry later this week along with cucumbers and hopefully greens, beets, and lettuce as well.

Feeding the Body

With all this heat (and frequent extra water) the garden has been growing very quickly. It is finally time to bring our first big bag of vegetables to Project SOUP, the food pantry of our mission partner the Somerville Homeless Coalition!

See the 'Winterbor' kale to the left? It has grown big and thick. So have the other two kinds of kale, collards, lettuce, and bok choi.

The lettuce has fed the Sunday morning crowd and folks went home with the small thinnings tonight after Rest and re/New. These are small greens that I had pulled them from between the greens to let the remaining plants grow to full size.

But the biggest and brightest of the lot, the 'cream of the crop' so to speak, is is going to be delivered tomorrow to Project SOUP. We have two grocery bags full of lettuce, a bunch of the best kale I could find, and all of the full-size bok choi specimens (it is a smallish variety).

This delivery is partly to fulfill our promise to the original funders of the garden. We are required to give 10% of our produce to the poor. Realistically, urban gardens often make this 'donation' without trying.

All that said, food pantries are accustomed to receiving produce significantly past it's prime. Tomorrow I will deliver a big bag of super fresh, super local, organic veggies to one of these pantries. What does it mean to give our very best away and only keep the punier specimens for ourselves?

P.S. We will likely have a glut of all kinds of gorgeous produce in the very near future. There will plenty for our church community and extended communities to enjoy! Please let me know if you'd like to cook with our produce for any kind of church function and help yourself to snips of herbs.

First First Church Salad

A handful of gigantic 'French Breakfast' radishes

We had our first (people food) harvest of the season yesterday as well as the first First Church garden salad. It was gigantic! It could have made it even bigger, but there were a lot of people out of town for the holiday weekend. A number of congregants even pulled extra radishes from the garden for their personal use.

We had three types of radishes growing in the garden (until yesterday) including 'Easter Egg', and 'Crimson Giant'. The ones harvested in the salad, however, are the delicious 'French Breakfast'. They taste so tender and mellow compared to what you can experience from the supermarket.

Serving from a deep wooden bowl...

... and onto the plate. (No, the watermelon's not from the garden. Maybe someday.)

Feeding the Body

Look at the beautiful worm we found on Sunday! This picture does not do justice to it's length and shininess. We are fortunate to have soil that is full of these little (and big) guys, but what a strange picture to start this harvest-oriented post with! Or maybe not...

This past Friday, we harvested our first 'crop' of the season. If you ever come work in the garden during the week, it is likely that you will meet a handful of passersby and neighbors who come to ask questions, give feedback, and look at the progress (and beauty) of our garden.

On this particular day a man approached Elizabeth F and I as we were preparing the zucchini bed and asked us, "Do you have any worms?" To which one of us said something along the lines of, "Oh, yes. Lots!" And then we didn't quite know what to say next. I figured he was a slightly awkward garden-lover wanting to make conversation.

Within a short time, however, it came out that this man actually loves a worm-loving pet turtle! He carries around a small jar to collect treats for his beloved pet (much to the horror of his wife who hates worm, but it seems like they've figured out ways to work around this). So of course we went scouring around for some nice plump worms and came up with a small harvest for him to bring home. (It turns out it is very difficult to find worms when you're looking for them. They're sneaky creatures.) So, in the loose sense of the term, the garden has had it's first 'harvest' of the season!

I am really, really, really excited to let you know that this coming Sunday we will have our second harvest! The lettuce, arugula, parsley, and radishes are getting pretty big, and this Sunday at coffee hour look for a simple, super fresh first  First Church Garden salad. It'll look something like this one from my own garden, but LOTS bigger:

I hope to see you there!