Greens: A Summer Garden Update

Our little container garden along our top landing has been growing and changing right along with the season. Today we thought we'd bring you a few updates on our leafy troughs we planted over the spring in hopes of fresh delicious salads to come.

Remember when we (ahem, I) first installed them?

Well, we've come a long way since. Both of our original spinach and arugula trough plantings have dried up in the same heat wave that took out our front pansies — but not before we got the chance to enjoy a good amount of them over the spring and early summer:

For a good stretch in there, we had rows full of beautiful baby spinach and arugula leaves we were able to incorporate into fresh salads like these:

Salads are super simple in our house — fresh greens, a handful of fruit or veggies we have an excess of, tossed to coat with extra virgin olive oil, topped with crumbled cheese and finished with a dash of kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper to taste. So simple and so so good.

For the sake of keeping it real, here's what the spinach and arugula troughs look like as of this morning:

Womp Womppp... While we're sad we're not still enjoying these leafy greens, we've been checking Sprout Robot to see which varieties we can plant again for an early fall crop — looks like a couple weeks from now we might just be able to replant the spinach and arugula from seed again. You know us, we'll keep you posted.

Our Swiss chard has been hanging in there throughout the heat and is actually still looking great:

Speaking of cutting greens straight from the plant, we've really been loving the ability to cut fresh herbs from all over the place.

That herb box planter we also planted back in April has gone from this:

To this in no time:

If you couldn't tell by the looks of it, we are LOVING fresh basil in just about everything we make these days.

That Pesto Perpetuo Basil plant Mary's mom gave us is also doing really well out front. It's grown from this:

To this:

Who knows how big that thing will continue to grow — it's been fun to watch.

Herbs in the backyard have held their own as well:

All in all, we've loved watching the progress of everything come and go and the ability to just snip what we need here and there as we cook. We hope to bring you updates on the other plants we've been taking a stab at growing in here soon too!

Anything doing particularly well or not-so-good in your garden right about now?