A Tour of the Salt Water Farm Garden

By Rebecca Sornson

Oh, it’s a beautiful sunny day here at Saltwater Farm. I’ve been meaning to write a blog entry for weeks now, but instead find myself watering, weeding, planting, picking, cooking, teaching, swimming, hiking, etc. etc.

I had been contemplating as I watered, weeded, planted, and picked a philosophical blog on peas.

I would begin with a story about how I knew it was summer when the peas were ripe on the fence line of my dad’s vegetable garden. Then, I would pontificate on the various trellising systems of peas and how some peas grew and straight tall and some refused to twine at all and instead flopped on the ground or grew into the neighboring row. I was considering comparing peas to people and the various paths we tread.

But then, I decided this was way too heady for summer. Instead, I would take you on a little tour of life in the garden and save deep contemplation for the depth of winter.

Here we are. The gardens are in full bloom.

I always have a moment of panic in June when it’s been four or five weeks since we have put most seeds in the ground and yet, there is no substantial food. Then, all of a sudden, overnight it seems, the gardens are full and we can’t keep up with the harvest.

Here is a bed of lettuce, raddichio, chard, onions, and nasturtiums. Did you know that nasturtium leaves make a delicious pesto?

Our asparagus is done for the year. Our bed of about 40 plants fed us well this spring. We were still harvesting asparagus into the middle of June. Now, it has grown tall into wavy ferns and will blow in the breeze until winter comes.

The monarda, also known as bee balm, bloomed last week. The flowers are magnificent and edible!  We garnished a beautiful cherry-studded farro salad with the monarda blooms at our last moon supper.

Oh look! Here are potatoes that went into the compost pile and decided instead of breaking down that they were going to grow into big beautiful potato plants.

Here are a few of our last garlic scapes. Garlic, like most plants, sends up a flower stalk and that is the garlic scape. The farmer or gardener quickly snaps it off so that the plant will send its energy down into making big garlic cloves rather than up into making flowers that will soon turn into seed pods. Garlic scapes are delicious and can be used in any way that you might use a green onion.

Here is dill flower and if you look closely, you will see a pollinator hard at work.

Sometimes farming is hard, but then the raspberries get ripe, and you walk around the garden humming a little tune about how glorious life is.

The first slim, soft green beans.

Our fava beans. I had never grown fava beans before and when I opened my first, I was struck by the thick, fuzzy white layer that protects the beans. Plants are incredible!

This beautiful lacy flower is growing all over the state of Maine right now. It is valerian and a really gentle, calming medicinal plant. I get so excited when medicine grows of its own accord.

Here is another beautiful white flowered medicinal plant. It is called an elder, and the flowers will be turned into magnificent fritters at Sunday’s Supper.

And here is me and an elderflower.

And there’s the ocean. Rocky and calm at low tide. This is midsummer at Saltwater Farm. We are mighty grateful.