I love this time of year in the yard because everything ripening is fresh and new. By November, we’ll be bored with them, moaning that the plants are still alive, and might “accidentally” neglect them to hasten their demise. For now, it’s exciting, every morning brings new discoveries.

This morning we saw cukes and chili peppers:

A neat new plant for us is the rat-tail radish, originally from Asia where the Thai call them phakkhithut, it was actually grown in the US since the mid-19th century. Looking suspiciously like a weed as it gets going, the pretty pretty blue & white flowers are followed the elongated edible seed pods, which really do taste like radishes. They’re seen either picked or still on the branch in farmers markets with Asian suppliers. I think this would be an extremely easy plant to use in open ground anywhere.

Finally (for now), the raised greens bed has been going full-force for a while now. We normally eat lots of this stuff, but it’s impossible to keep up with what’s ready now. There are several kinds of salad greens, some cooking greens and the cukes which climb the trellis to give everything shade when they’ll need it most in a few weeks.

Posted on 1:24 pm July 13, 2009