Garden to table

The good news: I survived the potato harvest and garden day on Monday.

The bad news: We have A LOT of potatoes in the ground still.

The good news: Those potatoes look much better after Matthew completed some hard core weeding.

I experienced extreme soreness (mostly in my quads, from all the squatting) and serious exhaustion from blueberry picking on Saturday and wasn’t sure that I would make it through the garden blitz on Monday.  Somehow, I did.

We started the day with a quick stop by the inner garden (AKA our bed at the community garden).

Next up, THE garden (AKA the commuter garden in the ‘burbs).  We harvested potatoes from the dead or nearly dead plants and left the rest to grow a bit longer, hoping to increase our yield.  We followed that with some general maintenance, including weeding and mulching.

After working all morning, I headed into Pam’s kitchen to make a garden-to-table lunch.

Clockwise from top: Sauteed summer squash with garlic, pasta with basil pesto, roasted tricolor potatoes with dill, steamed Swiss chard with olive oil.  Pretty much everything on the plate came from our garden, most of it picked that morning — good fuel for a day of hard work!

We’re giving a garden tour to some family members this weekend.  Won’t they be surprised when we hand them shovels and pitch forks and point them in the direction of the potato patch!  Hands-on tours are the best kind, right?