i thought i’d take you on a brief tour of what’s happening in my southeastern connecticut garden this week. first up, swiss chard. i grew a massive amount of swiss chard almost (mostly) by accident. someone gave me a flat of the stuff, and like any good gardener, i just couldn’t bring myself to throw it on the compost pile, so i planted it. turns out, it’s a wonderful green. not as strongly-flavored and tough as kale, more like spinach. i’ve been using it in calzones and omelets and stir-frys and just about anything else i can think of. great stuff.

swiss chard

next to the swiss chard, we have the beets. they were direct-sown on may 6th, and it looks to me like they’re ready to eat! i love pickled beets.

beets

and speaking of pickles, the pickling cukes are coming in gangbusters. i already started a sweet pickle batch with 6-1/2 pounds worth. i have a recipe i got from an old ortho book on canning that takes 8 days to make. my dh loves them, and we ran out last year, so i’ll be making several batches this year, if the plants hold out. they’re looking a little sad already, though.

pickling cuke

next stop is tomatoes. unfortunately, out of the 18 or so varieties i planted, nothing has ripened yet. but remember that post about the indigo rose tomatoes from last april? here they are, ripening on the vine. they look fantastic!

indigo rose tomato

now we come to another purple beauty, burpee’s hybrid eggplant. too small to pick, but looking great.

burpee hybrid eggplant

and this third example of purple fruit is our thornless blackberry. this is the best plant in my garden… it is totally carefree, fruits on this year’s wood, did i mention it’s thornless?, nobody seems to want to eat it, and it produces like crazy. we will soon be hip-deep in blackberry jam… yum!

thornless blackberry

finally, this last shot is technically not in the garden. but it was until very recently. the garlic got harvested, and it’s sitting in the portable greenhouse drying now. looks like a good crop, though it never seems to last me the whole winter. this year i tried a variety called early italian easy-peel. with a name like that, who could resist?

garlic

(cross-posted to auntie beak’s blog)