Summer in the Garden

Hello, gardeners and garden connoisseurs!

Welcome to summertime in the garden.  My name is Alix Wicker and I'm the Zilkha Center intern in charge of tending to the Williams garden for the next few months.  I'm incredibly excited to have the opportunity to build and explore the garden, and to share the results with all of you!  I hope to learn quite a bit about every step of food production - from planting to harvesting to cooking to eating - along the way.

A bed of yummy lettuce

This season is beautiful in Williamstown, and the weather has been lovely for the short time I have been here.  I snapped some photographs of the garden last week when I had the chance to sneak away from my duties working at Reunion.  So much is in season!  The garden is practically overflowing with snap peas, carrots (5 different kinds!), lettuce, radishes, bok choy, kale, chard, broccoli, and garlic scapes.  I turned most of those vegetables into a stir fry last night - my first meal of many from the garden.

The sugar snap peas are to-die-for.  The huge, sprawling pea plant has continued to spread, claiming most of the bed as its own (which I am perfectly OK with).  I plant to stake the plant sometime soon so that it can continue to expand!  I like the snap peas best straight from the garden and I couldn't help but eat almost all of them when I was harvesting for the Zilkha Center lunch today.

The best thing ever.

The kale has flourished, as well.  I think this beautiful variety is Red Russian kale, but I'm not quite sure where I took the picture.  With the help of dining services, I plan to cryovac the kale and save it for use all year.

Red Russian kale

The radishes come in many varieties, some of which turned out rather strangely.  I've included one of the more interesting pictures below.  Unfortunately, many of the radishes were past their prime or had been eaten by insects.  I managed to salvage a few of them to share at lunch today.

Purple Plum Radish

French Breakfast Radish

We held our first harvest last week, gathering snap peas and salad greens for dining services to use during Reunion Week at Williams.   Only a small group of us attended, since most students hadn't yet returned to campus.  It started to rain just as we were finishing, but Kendra, Cedar, and I managed to harvest quite a bit, both for the college and for ourselves.  There is lots more eating to be done!  

Kendra with her bounty of garlic!

Thank you for reading!  Please keep checking the blog.  I will try to keep it updated a few times a week with photos and recipes (and I will hopefully post more later today).
Happy gardening,
Alix