Hattie’s Garden is pleased to be working with Deep Grass Organic this season to offer some of their exceptional produce. Beginning this week, we will have some of their new Spring Onions (full-sized onions, not scallions!) and Small New Red Potatoes!

These will be available from us here at the Garden during our Thursday and Friday hours, and also at Garden Shack Farmers Market. The Historic Lewes Farmers Market is a producer-only market — something we greatly respect — so you will not be able to get them there. You can find Deep Grass at the Rehoboth Farmers Market on Tuesdays from 12 – 4 for a host of certified organic seasonal vegetables.

You can find us on this week at Hattie’s Garden on Thursday and Friday from 2 to 5, at the Garden Shack Farmers Market on Thursday from 2 to 6, and at the Historic Lewes Farmers Market (HLFM) on Saturday from 8 to 12. If these times/dates do not work for you, please email Hattie to make other arrangements.

Available Produce this Week

In addition to the onions and potatoes listed above from Deep Grass, Hattie’s Garden is harvesting this week:

• Early Wonder Tall Top Beets — These are tasty beets with amazing greens.
• Hakurei Turnips — If you usually turn your nose up at turnips, you may be in for a sweet surprise with this Japanese variety! They are sweet, delicate, small white morsels of delight with the nicest greens of any turnip we have ever seen.
• Arugula — Triple-washed and bagged, young and very tasty.
• Lettuce — Young Black-seeded Simpson and Red Sails loose leaf for quick salads. Triple-washed and bagged.
• Mesclun — with wonderful young Asian greens and beautiful lettuce. Triple-washed and bagged, of course.
• Red Russian Kale — This week’s selection will be very young and perfect for very quick cooking, or using in salads or juicing.

A note on our salad ingredients — Always store salad ingredients in the coldest part of your refrigerator, NOT in the crisper. The moisture content in our greens is just right for you to leave them stored in the bag, just as they are sold. For best results while you are out and about doing your shopping, put a cooler with ice in your car for all your produce, especially if you are not going home immediately.

Fresh Cut Herbs

We are growing a lot of nice herbs this year. I always thought it was so hard to know how to use herbs until a friend of mine with a background in the culinary arts told me to stop thinking so much and just use herbs generously in everything! I guess it is not rocket science after all, and they are like super powerhouses of nutrition.

This week we will have available “Mojito” Mint, beautiful Italian Parsley, true Greek Oregano, aromatic English Thyme, wonderful Lemon Thyme which can be used in any recipe calling for lemon juice, lemon zest or lemon flavoring, savory Sage and delightfully fragrant Rosemary.

We will also do a combo pack for you of smaller amounts of any three herbs this week for the price of one herb.

Plants for your Garden

Tomatoes

This week we are featuring the last of our collection of healthy heirloom tomato plants. Next week we will have a final batch of fast growing SunGold cherry tomatoes and our favorite grape: Honeybunch Grape. The SunGold is legendary of course, and the Honeybunch grape is a small grape tomato without a hard skin! Nice and delicate and sweet, it won’t explode in your mouth or roll around the plate escaping your fork.

Peppers & Eggplants

We have all of our favorite sweet peppers, including bell peppers and lots of our favorite Jalapeno ‘Jalafeugo’.

Peppers like HOT weather, as do eggplants and will produce throughout the summer and into September and October. They are simple to freeze too. Wash, cut them up to the size you want for cooking later in the winter and freeze on a cookie sheet before placing in freezer bags. You can pour them out of the bag whenever you need them.

Pepper growing tips: Peppers will not want as much fertility as tomatoes. And did you know you can put peppers as close as one foot apart? Staking your peppers is a good idea too as they begin to grow tall and produce lots of heavy fruit. They are a wonderful and attractive container plant and will grow easily in a 12 inch pot.

Cucumber & Squash Plants

If you would like any of our cucumber or squash plant varieties, please let me know and I will plant them for you now. These plants are fast growing and you will have plenty of fruit before the summer is over. We plant any vegetable with a 50 or 60 day maturity time frame throughout most of the month of July.

Flowers

This week we will have our final batch of Benary Giant Zinnias and lots of Gomphrena which is available as in Mixed and Purple colors.

Gomphrena globosa, also known as Globe Amaranth, is a beautiful annual growing to about two feet tall. Incredibly tolerant of heat and drought, it will grow in just about any soil and doesn’t want much fertility. “Average soil” will do the trick. It can be used fresh for a beautiful filler (or on its own) and can also be dried. Plant Gomphrena behind your Profusion Zinnias for a wonderful summer display. Our final batch of Profusion Zinnias (available in the following colors: Mix, Hot Cherry, Yellow, White and Deep Salmon. will be ready next week for you. They are also heat and drought tolerant and need no maintenance, spreading up to two feet wide with a height of about a foot.

Transplanting in this weather is sometimes tricky because we have had little rain for a couple weeks. Wet the area thoroughly first, early in the day and let things soak in, then plant in the evening, and water everything again after you plant. Keep the area nice and moist for a couple of days as your plants get over the initial shock and you should have no problems. Don’t expect growth the first week as things acclimate. Then they will take off!

Herbs

We still have a full line of our herbs, including new batches of Genovese basil every week through the fourth of July. Although it is still a great time to plant any of our herbs, and we also now have Marjoram, this year we will pot up some of the perennial herbs for fall planting and you may purchase larger plants early in the fall from Hattie’s Garden. Rosemary, Thyme, Oregano, Sage and Chives will all overwinter beautifully and you will have nice large established herbs to use next spring when the first of the local produce becomes available.

We will also bring to you Cilantro and Dill for your fall planting. These two herbs do not enjoy hot weather and many of you have expressed to me your frustration in growing them in the summer. It isn’t you, its them! If you plant these toward the end of the summer as the days shorten and the nights turn cooler, you will have the most fabulous cilantro and dill you have ever seen! I have had cilantro planted for the fall reach nearly two feet tall with incredible flavor.

White Sage! We have a nice Native American “smudge sage” ready for you now. This is not a “culinary” sage, but a ceremonial sage and is a magnificent plant, actually an evergreen perennial shrub. Beautiful whitish evergreen leaves with white to pale lavender flowers that are very attractive to bees–thus its name: Salvia apiana. Give it plenty of room. This drought tolerant sage can reach 4 feet high and wide.

Lemongrass is still coming along! Lemongrass needs hot weather to grow and we are finally seeing some progress. With our long season, you can still get some magnificent Lemongrass growing for your garden. The plants will be ready for you before the end of June and we will announce them.

Yours in the Garden & the Markets,