Fruits and Vegetables!

"Nice fresh fruits and vegetables / make you feel so free."
Shonen Knife, Fruits and Vegetables

The plants have begun to bear fruits (and vegetables)!

These fruits and vegetables are both nice and fresh, though none is yet edible.

It will shock no one that the outdoor vegetables are thriving most; every plant has at least one product on display. The tomatoes lead the way with lots of both varieties (pear tomatoes and cherry tomatoes) in various stages of ripeness:

The cucumber, however, takes the prize for sheer vegetable mass (not surprising given its propensity for taking over its pot). In addition to one behemoth, there are many mini-cukes in the works. Here's the behemoth, with burgeoning eggplant and an eggplant blossom for scale:

And speaking of mini, the cucumber's pot-mates, the jalapeño and the eggplant, each have little more than a shiny little ball ballooning where a flower used to be. The jalapeño is an appropriately edgy dark green, the eggplant a creamy white (the norm for its variety).

Inside, the tomatoes have grown taller than me, and only the cherry has blossomed. But it is blossoming quite enthusiastically, and my cotton-swab pollination seems to have worked in at least one instance. Yes, we have our first indoor tomato!

The mint and basil continue to remain wildly productive as well, and the basil lent itself to a delicious caprese dinner the other night. Here's the mint forest:

We are thrilled with all this success. And yet... The leafy greens remain, surprisingly, something of an enigma. Yes, I harvested some collards (raw, they taste like brussels sprouts!) and spinach to accompany a dinner last week, and yes they were delicious sautéed with mustard and a little (Niman Ranch) bacon, but then again, what wouldn't be delicious sautéed with mustard and bacon? More importantly, though, why do they seem to be the least happy of our botanical charges? The outdoor arugula and spinach bolted very quickly despite my (admittedly inconsistent) attempts to keep their tops clipped and send their energy into delicious leaf production. The collards seem to have stopped growing altogether. The surviving indoor greens have fully recovered from their cat attack and are currently resting in sequestration, healthy but also not perceptibly growing. I'll have to do some reading to find out how to coax more leaves from these willful little creatures.

In any event, just having nice fresh fruits (tomatoes!) and vegetables (jalapeño! eggplant!) in the works, even if they're not yet ready for consumption, does make me feel so free. Hopefully within the next couple of weeks, we will be free from the necessity of eating primarily the sorts of fruits and vegetables that we saw growing in the fields of California earlier this month. In particular, that one little indoor tomato growing next to our dining room table reminds me, to quote the great chaotician Ian Malcolm, that (even in a city apartment) "life finds a way." (I just re-watched childhood favorite Jurassic Park; forgive the reference.)

Mint Ice Cream

Mint Chocolate Chip is an ice cream flavor composed of mint ice cream and small chocolate chips. In some cases the liqueur crème de menthe is used to provide the mint flavor, but in most cases peppermint or spearmint flavoring is used. Food coloring is usually added to make it green, but it may be white in "all natural" or "organic" varieties.

Wikipedia: "Mint Chocolate Chip"

Summer's transcendent mint chocolate chip ice cream was not made from crème de menthe or mint flavoring, but rather from mint leaves that she grew in a container outside our apartment. The leaves provided the slight coloration and potent mint flavor. The ice cream is perfect. Absolutely perfect:

Additionally, the dairy came from the local Rhody Fresh co-op (whose cows graze and are happy--I've seen them!) and the sugar is organic. Cows and cane probably aren't in our garden's future, so we are lucky our grocery store carries ingredients that no doubt contributed to the ice cream's indescribable (unless you consider "transcendent" and "perfect" descriptive, which, sadly, I do not) deliciousness.

Finding Inspiration in Odd Places

Herbicides can be used to combat the growth of weeds in alfalfa fields. The herbicides typically used are quite toxic, and federally mandated directions for their use require such measures as 24 hours’ notice, onsite inspections to prevent “water contamination or drift into residential areas,” and the use of “special equipment (respirators, protective clothing and the like).” Many farmers would prefer to use Roundup agricultural herbicides, which control nearly every weed species in alfalfa crops, “dissipate[] rapidly in the soil” without residue, can be bought at any local hardware store, and can be used without any specialized safety equipment. The Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) has found the active ingredient in Roundup—glyphosate—to be one of the most environmentally responsible herbicides available commercially. But applying Roundup to kill the weeds in conventional alfalfa fields would also destroy the alfalfa.

Gregory Garre, Attorney for Monsanto, Petitioner's Brief in Monsanto v. Geertson

Although Monsanto v. Geertson is about alfalfa--not something that makes up a large part of my diet, except very indirectly (principally as dairy products)--its focus on pesticides got me thinking about the food value of the plants we're growing. I recently read that among the grocery store foods to approach with the most caution are generic potatoes, which leach pesticides from the surrounding soil and transport these chemicals directly to their consumers. Yum!

Sadly, we did not elect to grow any potatoes this year--we'll have to rely on organics from the grocery store and farmers' market to avoid concentrated chemical pesticides. (Side note: Summer did keep an indoor potato plant alive for quite some time once before, but it never seemed to grow particularly tuberous.) But it is nice to know that the vegetables we are producing will not have been drenched in anything but sunshine and, for the outdoor plants, the occasional downpour.

And, speaking of the outdoor plants, they are continuing to thrive and are beginning to pay dividends as food (despite my propensity for parenthetical phrases today, I will eventually address the promised point of our plants' food value). As for the thriving, there is no longer much (if any) visible bedding in the leafy greens, the vegetables are growing like crazy (including the once-overcrowded pepper), and the tomatoes are blooming in earnest now. The only concern with the vegetables is the aggressive cucumber plant, which is shooting out tendrils in an attempt to take over the whole cage and planter from the eggplant and pepper. Those two scrappy vegetables, however, seem to be holding their own. Meanwhile the basil has leaves to rival (or best) the spinach and arugula in size, and Summer has managed to multiply the already impressive mint by replanting cuttings.

Back to food(!), though, the leafy greens are probably overready for their first harvest. I tasted an arugula leaf the other day and was blown away by the peppery flavor, whose intensity bests even leaves from the farmers' market. I guess nothing beats straight-from-the-garden for flavor. The mint is also more intense than any I can remember having tasted. Summer intends to make fresh mint ice cream TONIGHT, an idea which has me giddy with excitement (and which had me slavering at my desk this afternoon). We are trying to figure out what to do with the basil; many of these greens and herbs have become so large so quickly that our meal plans failed to account for their viability as ingredients. All vegetables are still in the floral stage, so we've had to resort to the farmers' market for fresh (and delicious) tomatoes which we consumed tonight.

Turning our attention inside, the leafy greens have not really recovered from their attack by a hungry and ornery (and obese) housecat. In fact, both indoor arugula plants and a spinach seem to have fully kicked the bucket; the two collards and the remaining indoor spinach soldier on but remain small. If they don't demonstrate a little more interest in getting big, they might have to lose their experimental status and go outside. The indoor tomatoes, however, continue to explode ever upward (forming an interesting contrast with the bushy tomatoes outside), shooting out branches at odd intervals. They do not seem to be flowering as quickly as the outdoor tomatoes, but they are unquestionably healthy and happy.

Summer has a menagerie just beginning to crop up inside as well. She is raising two varieties of tomatoes and green peppers from seed. In weeks past, they were barely visible; now, they are several inches tall. With any luck, the six varieties of tomatoes planted on two different time frames will provide us with a steady supply of late-summer fruits. And I realized that I've been neglecting the culinary potential of another indoor denizen under Summer's care: lavender. Sure enough, I just plucked and tasted a leaf from the plucky herb, and it is delicious.

So, with the exception of those few that succumbed to feline hunger and orneriness, our plants are healthy and are in the process of becoming edible. We haven't even had the tiniest thought about resorting to chemicals that are quite toxic, that might contaminate residential areas, or that require respirators or special clothing (nor to their counterparts that dissipate in soil and leave no residue). To put things into a bit of perspective, it's true that our garden is nowhere near subsistence-level, but it's equally true that hazardous chemicals have no business being anywhere near our food. And to make sure that your food is chemical-free, the only thing better than knowing your farmer is growing food yourself.