We’ve been enjoying a streak of above-normal temperatures for the past week, and today seemed like a good day to work on getting the garden ready for planting. We learned a few things from last year’s garden, and one thing we’ve decided is to put the tomato plants in Earth Boxes this year. The deck gets full sun and seems like a good place for them. They got so big last year they shaded the peppers and eggplants and probably soaked up most of the nutrients in the raised bed. Hopefully the new plan will keep things under control a bit better.

After I raked the dead leaves out from around the bed (they spent the winter trapped between the bed itself and the deer fencing), I cleaned out the bed, and turned the soil over. I was happy to discover that the bed is full of earthworms. While I’m not crazy about finding them in my escarole (that’s a long story for another time), I do recognize their worth in a vegetable garden. Once the soil was turned over, I raked it smooth and then took some samples from various points in the bed. The samples were mixed together and will now go to the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, where they will analyze it (for free!) and tell us what we need in the way of soil amendments before we begin planting.

Another very cool thing about gardening is the up close and personal view you get of the persistence of life. The bed, like the rest of the yard, was full of acorns. A lot of them, left to their own devices, were in the process of becoming trees. Now they’re trees interrupted, of course, but someday one of these little guys will grow up to be a mighty oak like the one that graces our yard.

As I feared they would, the tomatoes are beginning to ripen all at once. I’ve already got some beautiful, ripe plum tomatoes waiting in the kitchen, and I just came in from the garden with a colander full of Romas, a couple of regular-style tomatoes (the vines are so entangled amongst themselves right now I have no idea what’s coming from what plant, except for the heirlooms, which have a distinctive look but haven’t ripened enough to pick yet), and two more flawless zucchini.

This morning I made two loaves of zucchini bread (from the Morning Glory Farm cookbook — their breads are just heavenly) from one of our big, gorgeous squash, and the Romas are likely going into a good pasta and fresh mozzarella salad for lunches next week.

I spent the last couple of weeks straying from my plan to chart my weekly menus out ahead of time, and I regretted it for the most part. Having a plan is better than not having a plan, and I like to be flexible with my plans, but I still like having some kind of a guideline. Last week I found myself running out of food (and therefore hitting the store more often than I would have liked) and feeling at loose ends when I came home from work.

Here’s this week’s game plan:

Sunday

• Grilled Vegetable Antipasto
• Rigatoni with Sunday Sauce - Braciole and Sausage
• Bread

Monday

• Breaded Chicken Cutlets
• Zucchini and Tomato Casserole

Tuesday

• Pasta with Leftover Sauce from Sunday’s Dinner

Wednesday

• Pork Tenderloin with Banana-Date Chutney
• Green Beans with Garlic and Ginger
• Naan

Thursday

• White Chicken Chili
• Salad with Jicama and Oranges
• Spicy Jalapeno-Cheddar Cornbread

Friday

• Maybe we’ll have fish. Maybe we’ll eat out. We’ll see.

There. I feel better just for having written it all down.

We didn’t have much time to hang around when we got home from work last night, but I did run out to the garden first thing and had two surprises awaiting me: first, minuscule jalapeno peppers on one of the plants on the observatory deck. Yup, peppers — tiny, green bulbs of hot, peppery goodness. They’re about an eighth of an inch long right now, but there’s no mistaking them.

Second surprise? Two ripening tomatoes. Yup, we have two tomatoes among the pounds of tomatoes weighing down our vines that are just beginning to turn orange. There are so many tomatoes on those plants that if they all ripen at the same time — which I’m absolutely certain they will — I will be posting tomato recipes daily and we will be eating them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Seriously, why don’t vegetables ripen in waves?

I did take pictures but didn’t have time last night to offload them from the camera, but I promise I’ll post them tonight. Mostly so you can look at the tiny baby peppers and go “Aww…”

They’re that cute.

Lettuce: We’ve eaten it all. I’ve cut the remaining plant stalks down to the ground. If current activity is any indication, we may well get a second harvest in early fall!

Zucchini: We ate those two perfect ones, and there are a few more growing on the plant, but they’re not looking well. I’m not sure if it’s the weather or something else that’s bothering them. The plant seems otherwise healthy, so a little research is likely called for.

Tomatoes: The plants are laden. The tomatoes are all bright green. Please don’t let them all ripen on the same day.

Eggplant: Blossoms, but nothing resembling eggplant just yet. I’m not sure what to expect.

Peppers: Lots of blossoms — we’ll have enough jalapenos for every Mexican restaurant in town if they all turn into peppers. The regular cooking peppers have blossoms too, but again, nothing resembling anything edible, and the timetable is unknown.

There sure is a lot of guesswork in gardening.

I’ve been quiet for the last few days, partly because I’ve not been feeling well, and partly because I’ve been alternately busy and resting. In any case, the garden continues to grow and change and evolve daily.

Our early crop of tomatoes have been beset by what appears to be blossom-end rot, likely caused by either a lack of calcium and/or too much damp weather. We talked to the “veggie guy” at Van Wilgen’s (I like going to a garden center that has a dedicated “veggie guy”), and there doesn’t seem to be much to do at this point other than get rid of the bad fruit and be proactive next year. Which basically means bringing a soil sample to the Agricultural Station to be analyzed and then adding lime before planting to achieve the proper pH levels. In the meantime, we’re just going to hope that the problem will be somewhat self-limiting. The plants are heavy with fruit, all of them, and we’re just waiting for a couple to ripen.

There are a few rotting zucchini on the vine — I’m not surprised, since the ones we lost seem to be lying on the ground, which has been very wet. We’ve been inundated again — lots of rain over the last several days, and the ground is almost always damp, and when the days are cloudy, nothing really has a chance to dry out for a bit.

We’re hoping the peppers will start producing soon. There are lots of blossoms forming on all the pepper plants, and a couple are forming on the eggplant as well. We’ve nearly harvested all the lettuce, and the cut-down plants are beginning to form new leaves. I’m guessing that we’ll be going on to a second lettuce harvest, perhaps into early fall (it likes cool weather).

We’ve learned a few things this summer about prep work (we didn’t do enough) and weather (in spite of one’s best efforts, it’s ultimately the boss).

A couple of weeks ago, Jim decided we should expand our agricultural operation by growing more herbs next year, but not in pots. We’re going to put a four-by-four raised bed — or perhaps a four-by-eight if we think we can fill it with enough stuff — behind the garage and put it not just culinary herbs, but some things that will be good for soapmaking (like lavender). I’ve been meaning to get the soapmaking operation underway again and this might give me a good reason to start.

So here’s what I learned: I have three or four romaine lettuce plants that have been completely harvested, stalks cut almost down to the ground. They are growing new leaves. I have no idea if there’s sufficient time left in their growing season for them to produce more edible crops, but I learned that they’ll re-shoot once they’ve been cut down. So there’s one lesson. The second thing: I took a couple of marigold stems in when I replanted to marigolds we bought for companion plants in the vegetable garden. They had basically broken off the plant when I unpotted it, but they had blooms, so I brought them inside and stuck them in a glass of water. They have since made roots. I didn’t know a plant would do this in my house. Usually they just come in and die. I’m going to throw all caution to the winds and put it in a pot of soil and see what happens.

We’re also wondering what we can plant late in August that will be ready for harvest in mid- to late-autumn. Kale and broccoli seem to be pretty high on the list of possibilities, along with root vegetables. A little more research is in order, but we might see if we can prolong our growing season a bit.

I’ve written before about all the romaine lettuce we’ve been eating (and continue to eat). It’s delicious lettuce, with beautiful, unblemished leaves and a gorgeous spring green color. We’ve enjoyed salads almost every night, and last night I made a good grilled chicken Caesar with a spectacular homemade dressing. But what we were really excited about was the side dish.

Last evening when we came home from work, we harvested our first two zucchini! I can’t even begin to describe how exciting it was. We knew a day or so beforehand that Monday would be the day — one zucchini was certainly ready to be picked, and its cousin on the vine looked to be growing quickly. Several days of very warm weather and sunshine (a real change from what we’ve been experiencing so far) really accelerated everything in the garden this week, and sure enough, by the time we got home from work, we had two zucchini ready for picking.

We discussed how best to prepare them — I think we really wanted to experience them fairly simply just to see if they tasted different from store bought — so we settled on lightly steaming them and adding a bit of butter and a sprinkle of salt and freshly ground pepper. They were sublime. I steamed them for a scant three minutes so they still had a bit of crunch left to them, and wow — they were delicious.

I had no idea a vegetable garden could be this satisfying — as I looked at my very green dinner plate last night and realized we grew most of what was on the dish, I felt a little sense of pride and accomplishment.

In the meantime, more garden plans are afoot.

Okay, we noticed that some of the leaves on the zucchini plant are acquiring a coating of what looks like white powder. After doing a bit of research last night on teh interwebz, I determined that we are suffering from powdery mildew, which is apparently something that thrives on wet, cool weather. And if we could characterize this season thus far, it would be wet and cool. Very wet indeed.

So now that we know what we’ve got, the next step was to figure out how to deal. The answer to this question was surprising. Milk. Diluted 1 part milk to 9 parts water (or 5 parts water, depending on which website you choose to believe), and sprayed directly on the leaves, preferably in the early evening so that it doesn’t evaporate off the plant too quickly. This sounds like some kind of plant voodoo to me, but of course I’m going to give it a shot. There are fungicides on the market, but since the goal is to keep things as organic as possible, we’ll start with the milk.

I’m also going to start keeping a garden journal so that we can keep track of our successes and failures this year.

We tried a noble experiment last week that apparently sounded better on paper than it worked in the execution. Our tomato plants are growing like… well, I guess like tomato plants. They’re huge. Freaking huge. And they’re getting heavy. So Jim rigged up a thing that went across the top of the garden bed, and we figured it made sense to tie the tomatoes up rather than stake them. Well, Jim noticed yesterday morning that the string had managed to cut right through a branch, so it was off to Van Wilgen’s to get more (taller) stakes. I spent a good deal of time last evening re-tying the plants.

While I was working out there, I did notice that a couple of tomatoes do look as though critters (the winged or crawling kind, since four-footers are fenced out) are snacking. It’s time for more Captain Jack’s Deadbug, which I’ll spray this evening after work. I did notice a beetle on one of the plants, and beetles, from what I gather, are not good garden visitors.

The most exciting thing yesterday was the appearance of our first zucchini. It’s not yet the size of my pinky finger, but it looks perfect. This, too, will hopefully live to adulthood and not end up as dinner for some uninvited guest. We are almost certain that we can see tiny baby peppers forming on some of the pepper plants (how many habaneros can we eat?), we’ve been eating Romaine lettuce every single night, and the eggplant is starting to look serious about its business. The potted herbs are mostly healthy — even the basil looks better than it did — and on Thursday I sprinkled some rosemary and some lemon thyme on the potatoes I roasted.

Wish us luck in the bug wars.

It’s amazing what a weekend of warm weather and sunny skies will do. We’ve been having an unusually wet spring (22 or so days of rain since June 1!) and the jury’s still out on the long-term effects this is going to have on the vegetables, but when we checked the garden last night, we were absolutely amazed. The tomatoes are suddenly producing fruit like crazy — even the little Romas are getting into the act. The Big Boys and Jet Stars are both producing and it seems like the tomatoes get bigger while you watch. On Monday evening, the tomato plants looked to be in danger of toppling their bamboo stakes over, they’re getting so big. Jim devised a clever way of tying them to an overhead brace, and I’ve got pictures, which I’ll post later on this evening when I have some time.

The eggplant seems to have grown a couple of inches overnight, and I think we can see where the peppers might actually be coming around, too. The zucchini is apparently poised for world domination, and we continue to enjoy harvesting and eating the Romaine lettuce.

The herbs, which are all set out in pots on the edge of the observatory deck now, look as though they’re doing well. I’m going to treat them to a bit of fish-in-a-blender this evening, because really, who wouldn’t love that?