Current garden count:

2 gallon bags of lettuce picked yesterday
8-10 strawberries
10 or so peas
3 artichokes

I think the lettuce is going to bolt soon. It's hard to remember, since I haven't kept track of it for the last two years, but I think this is the earliest yet for the lettuce to bolt. The giant red mustard is already flowering, as is the bok choy. The bok choy again has been really disappointing. The first year I had bok choy it did really well -- the spring must have been substantially cooler -- but the past two years the bok choy has bolted really early and been lackluster as far as production. I've moved its location around the garden, but nothing seems to protect it from the excess heat in our garden. The artichokes are producing beautifully -- there are 17 more artichokes on the plants at various stages of growth. The tallest of the artichokes is over 6 ft tall now! They seem to love their location -- right up against a wall facing the sun from the south.

I've been lucky enough to find people at work who will relieve me of my excess produce . . . a good thing because once the first lettuce head bolts, I will need to harvest and store 30+ heads of lettuce. Always good to know that I have friends willing to take it off my hands!

I've discovered that Mammoth snow peas grow beautifully in my garden, but seem to take over and crowd out all the other peas. Perhaps next year I'll just plant the Mammoth snow peas and find a good variety of sugar peas that also grows reasonably large, so that it can hold its own against the Mammoths!

All the beans are up now, I think, or close. I'm hoping to get a good crop of beans so that I can do pickled green beans again. Missed doing them last year, and once we ran out of the previous year's stock, we were very sad.

I watered the squashes, cucumbers, and tomatoes with worm tea last weekend. It seems to have given them some renewed vigor. The cucumbers in particular were looking quite pathetic, and not putting much on in the way of growth. But they've suddenly sprouted a few new leaves and a couple of inches of vine. The squash -- summer and winter -- are looking better and growing more too. The tomatoes are flowering nicely, and the yellow tomato -- Taxi -- has already set three tomatoes. I'm hoping for a good tomato crop this year in order to make that excellent roasted tomato sauce from two summers ago. That was marvelous. Now I just need to get a pressure canner to can my harvest safely!

Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce

Ingredients:

Fresh vine-ripened tomatoesOnions, chopped
Garlic cloves, minced
Sweet peppers
Chili peppers
Herbs of your choice (such as basil, rosemary, oregano, thyme)
1-2 T. of water to cook onions and garlic until soft
Coarse salt and freshly-ground black pepper
Granulated sugar (optional)*

1. Preheat oven to 350, and center your rack.
2. Cut tomatoes and peppers into chunks. Seed the chilis if you don't want the sauce too spicy.
3. Chop onions and mince garlic, and saute in a large pot or dutch oven (with ovenproof handles) in a little bit of water in order to soften. You can use oil instead if you don't plan to can your tomato sauce, but if you do plan to can it, make sure you use water, as the oil isn't safe for canning.
4. Add tomatoes, peppers, herbs, salt and pepper to the mixture. Stir to combine, and place the pot in the oven.
5. Roast at 350 for 4-5 hours. As the sauce cooks down, add more tomatoes and peppers for the first 3 hours.
6. At the end of the 5 hours, your sauce should be a reddish brown with large, soft chunks of vegetables in it.
7. Allow to cool. Put the sauce through a food mill if you have one; if you don't, press it through a strainer.
8. This sauce freezes well, and is beautiful when added to cream to make a rose sauce.