Haul: Giant zucchini

A really huge specimen plucked yesterday (above with the rest of the haul). 

Supporting bigger plots of green

Last Thursday, I attended the Prospect Park Alliance Junior Committee summer soiree at the park's charming boat house. Having covered many a benefit in a previous life as a Style.com scribe, I've always thought that this do is the most fun one in the city. This year's theme was Beach Blanket Bingo. As always, the crowd was cool (locals supporting the best park in NYC!) and  fashiony (Junior Committee co-chair and Vogue features director Sally Singer, Vena Cava's Lisa Maycock etc). Plus great cocktails, music (courtesy of Southpaw) and boat rides over the moss covered lake as the sun set. My friend billed the atmosphere: Gatsby-esque. But Brooklyn of course. For evidence, see this.  

The babies: Bell Pepper

The other day, I bought a red bell pepper for almost $2 from the local supermarket. One. Not an organic one at that. This little one and its kin now growing in my farm should save some $$ in a few weeks. 

Gardening in Lights

More lawn news... songstress Lily Allen is apparently interested in grass, according to the U.K. Daily Mail, which dutifully reports that she bought a new lawnmower. The paper ties it to her former predilection for another type of weed. Naturally. 

Garden Cliff Notes: Anti Lawn

If you can get past the ironic/dodgy cover of Obama and the missus, there is an illuminating piece about America's fixation with lawns in this week's New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert. 

- the relatively manicured yard in early June - 

The author chronicles the rise of lawnism and the anti-lawn movement as championed by Michael Pollan (whose The Botany of Desire is the spiritual/intellectual inspiration for my garden) and others. 

Early on, my fellow gardenista Jenn suffered from lawnism. The Connecticut-bred Jenn furiously seeded and mowed the back and front lawns. Then she broke her arm about a month ago. Things have gone to seed since mowing is not my forte. 

But it turns this is not so bad for the environment and the blades' sex life, according to the Kolbert piece and Pollan's Why Mow? treatise. 

- the (wild) grass today -

Outside Counsel

This cucumber looked plump and ready for salad but the mini white thorns threw me. Supermarket varieties don't have them. Then I spied a similar-looking cuke on a post about mini gardens by the Germinatrix on her blog at Domino Magazine. I asked and here's most of her answer:

1. Pick when color is uniform and deep green

2. Thorns: "They will smooth down totally if you run your hands over the mighty cuke."

3. Harvest earlier rather than later. "Whatever you do - don't let them get yellow! That is the sure sign of an old, bitter cucumber... and who wants that? Not me, not in my cucumbers, or in my men!"

She said it! Who's to argue? I made a rather more freestyle cucumber sandwich (untoasted and with grape tomatoes) for lunch.

Nothing to do with gardening: Growing askew in the Ivy League

Nothing to do with gardening but this article on the disadvantages of an elite education by William Deresiewicz in The American Scholar is about nurturing (or lack thereof) of minds in Ivies. Shatteringly enlightening. 

Origin of the Species: Jalapeno

I thought I had killed this pepper tree by transplanting it out of the shade of the giant zucchini bush. Then today, I noticed this fellow. 

Namesake: Xalapa, Veracruz in Mexico

Provenance: As above. The original origin of the chile/chilli/chili is Peru or Ecuador.

Distinguishing marks: Scars. The more scars, the spicier. But on the Scoville scale of fieriness, it is average, coming in at about 5,000 between the 1 million unit and top ranking Naga Jolokia and the zero ranking bell pepper (also growing in the backyard farm). 

Stats: Grows to 3 inches and turns red as it ages. Like all other chili peppers, J has anti-cancer capasaicin.

Family tree: A type of Capsicum 

Diaspora: The world via Christopher Columbus. He came looking for (amongst other things) the super-luxe good of the time, black pepper but found the red version. He added the 'pepper' suffix and spread it to rest of the world, including Asia. More recently, specifically and unscientifically, jalapenos have journeyed far and wide thanks to American fast food chains like Chili's.

The kicker: For J junkies, the euphoric high comes from capasaicin, which is also used in pepper spray. The overindulgence cure? Forget water and go for booze or milk, according to folks who know much more than me at Jalapeno Madness. 

Nothing to do with gardening

Until the backyard harvest...

I am getting vegetables from my local CSA. 

For a bargain investment of circa $300 in Conuco, an upstate New York farm run by a farmer of color, I get a box of vegetables once every two weeks through October. Being away two Saturdays ago, I missed my first box and it went to good use at a food pantry. 

Today, I managed to get down to the Magnolia Tree Earth Center."It's very green today," said CSA adminstrator Lauren Melodia as she packed my box under a mural of Hattie Carthan, a Bed-Stuy tree champion and environmentalist from back in the day (b. 1901, d.1984). 

My monochromatic box included kale, broccoli, bok choi, kohlrabi (!? must google later) and sunflower sprouts.

Origin of the Species: Dahlia

Namesake: Anders Dahl, 1751-89, the Swede botanist and pupil of plant-naming guru Carolus Linnaeus (more on him later)

Provenance: Mexico, Guatemala

Stats: Fat sectioned trunks with fatter blooms. Petals range from skinny, spiky things to lush pompoms. Some blooms can allegedly grow up to 12 inches.

Family Tree: A branch of the Aster family 

Diaspora: According to a Brian Killingsworth article in the American Dahlia Society, a box of dahlias were shipped from Mexico to Holland in 1872 after the first wave of European interest in flower waned . All but one bright red bloom survived. How not to love a wily survivor! Now everywhere and Brooklyn. 

Reasons for Urban Gardening No. 1: Cut roses for free

All those rose poems finally make sense.

Sacred Emily

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose

Loveliness extreme.

Extra gaiters,

Loveliness extreme.

Sweetest ice-cream.

Pages ages page ages page ages. 

- Gertrude Stein