The urban garden continues to yield its bounty

Lemon basil, kale, and beets growing on my apartment porch right smack dab in the middle of sunny Los Angeles!















A corner of my square foot garden planter-on-wheels with carrots and beets I pulled out today.

You can see how these buildings shade my porch and prevent my plants from getting more than about five hours of direct sunlight. Because of this, my beets were only the size of large radishes and my white, orange, and red carrots were pretty little.


Next task to attempt: convince the apartment manager to let me grow a winter crop on the roof.:) Due to our long growing season here in So. Cal, I can sow cold weather crop seeds now (like more lettuce, kale, beets, peas, bok choi, kale, etc.) and have a new harvest by November. If I plant on the roof, I'll get enough sunshine for them to get big.

One of my favorite ways to eat arugula..

Tuesday night dinner: asparagus risotto with "squash and smash" arugula, basil, and cherry tomato salad.

I've managed to grow some pretty good-looking arugula this year..beginner's luck..and have had a pretty long-running crop. It's the beginning of August and two or three of the twelve or so plants I've got has begun to shoot up some seed pods, which isn't bad for arugula planted at the beginning of May. My leaves have been nice and green and apparently not very many bugs like the taste of arugula because the leaves are fairly spotless. I harvest them by picking the bigger leaves around the outside of the plant right into my salad spinner basket, which I then take in and rinse and spin and cook. In this photo you see lettuces near the bottom. Arugula upper right, then (going counterclockwise) kale, carrots, and then beet greens and swiss chard.


Here are my cherry tomatoes that are not yielding a lot, due to only 5 hours per day of direct sunlight on my shaded porch, but are giving it a go nonetheless.











To make "squash and smash" salad:
A couple of handfuls of arugula
A couple of handfuls of basil (Italian or spicy basil work best)
About a pint of cherry tomatoes (be colorful!)
Red wine vinegar
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Kalamata olives, preferably oil-cured but brine-cured are fine


Put the cherry tomatoes in a bowl and cover the bowl with a paper towel. Use one hand to reach in and pop or smash each cherry tomato while your other hand hold the paper towel to keep tomato seeds from squirting you in the eye or flying this way and that in the kitchen. :) Tear or cut up the olives into pieces and add them. Splash with some vinegar--start easy and later you can add more if it needs more tang. Salt and pepper things. Then drizzle olive oil over it. Mix around with a fork. (The juices from the tomatoes make a lovely vinaigrette with the other ingredients. And, by the way, regular tomatoes just won't work the same. It needs to be cherry tomatoes.) Just before serving, rip the arugula and basil into the tomato/ olive mixture and toss. Eat it all up. Leftovers will be very wilted.