In My San Diego Garden and Kitchen
About this time of the year, the garden is at the intersection of what has been and what will be. We can count the navel oranges left on the tree, the kale plants are uprooted, red cabbage, beets, carrots and spring onions are in the fridge; sweet peas make way for cucumbers on the trellis.
Bush beans and lettuce are the only vegetables I will continue to harvest but the fruit is coming on. There are apricots, apples and rhubarb now; the marionberries will ripen in the coming week. Later the nectaplums will finish the fruit season. So it is about beginnings and endings as June commences.
I had a handful of the first ‘Dorsett Golden’ apples on the counter and brought in a few stalks of rhubarb to make the first of the season apple-rhubarb sauce. We’ll savor this batch but soon I’ll be stocking the freezer.
‘Gold Kist’ and ‘Blenheim’ apricots
Last week we harvested 11 pounds of apricots. It will be one of the best crops we’ve had in the last half dozen years. Ample winter rain and chill, skillful pruning by my husband and favorable spring conditions came together for the pending bounty. We thin lightly, preferring the smaller, intensely flavorful cots.
It’s a race to pick the apricots before they drop or the birds find them. When I hear the wild parrots squawking and swooping about the neighborhood, I head for the apricot trees. Flocks of several dozen birds can polish off a peach, fig or apricot crop in short order. Such stories are legendary in Point Loma. Quarantining does make us more attentive.
‘Royal Burgundy’ bush beans are reliable producers even in cool weather here and it’s so easy to see them on the plants. Though they change to green with heat, I add them raw to salads for the color.
The small emerging kale leaves are my favorite for salads—these salvaged before making room for zucchini.
The bag put out on the gate for pick up was mostly damaged kale which the bunnies don’t seem to mind.
The thickly sown lettuce in the 12-inch container has been my most successful way to grow lettuce in late spring. I move the pot from sun to shade as needed. Cimarron may be my favorite summer lettuce and it is slow to bolt.
Not many more mornings of fresh squeezed orange juice. With the remaining oranges I’ll freeze zest and cubes of juice for recipes and decide between candied orange peels, and a dessert with oranges featured.
Or maybe we’ll just eat them for dessert with the remaining blueberries.
Also departing from the flower garden are the intensely purple larkspurs. I’ll miss their contrast with the butter yellow Julia Child rose. In these uncertain times, I know for certain they’ll be back next spring.
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