Mid-Summer Garden Report

Well, “Flavor of the Week” has slowed down quite a bit over the last several weeks — busy with all that cooking, gardening and other good summer activities.  The rooftop herb garden here at the restaurant has been going just great this year.  Like everybody else, we’ve survived the dry spell in June (and had to resort to a little garden hose use this year!), and now are enjoying timely periodic showers.

I expanded the garden this year quite a bit, and now have 55 crates of herbs and a few small vegetables.  In order to make this work, I built a 50-foot long PVC pipeline to bring water over from another rooftop air conditioning unit.  It’s a little “Willy Wonka”, but it works!  Amazingly, the 3 rooftop units combined produce over 60 gallons of condensed water per day here, and we only occupy a single story 3000 sq ft space — the extended math on larger buildings around town and the world over is just mind-boggling!

Many of the mainstays of the garden have flourished so well this summer season: rosemary, mint, chives, thyme, lovage.  Spring crops, such as chervil which made such a nice imprint on our Sunday Menus in May, have given way to summer crops like purslane, marjoram and fresh bay leaf which are being used on current menus.  I have so much mint and rosemary that I should probably apply for a vendor’s stall at the Central Square Farmers’ Market!  But we keep finding ways to use it all here, partially thanks to Scott, our bar manager, as he continues to concoct refreshing summer drinks for our guests.

I plant a new crate of french breakfast radishes each week, and since they take 25-30 days to mature from seed I always have five successive weeks in process so that we never run out of these beautiful little gems for use on our vegetable antipasto.  Whenever I see guests pass on the radish, I chase the busboy down into the galley and tell him to take it back out there to that table, or it’s “No Dessert!”.  The hot chilies are going nuts these days, too, and these we use for ceviche on Sunday Menus and on Monday Night Tapas, as well as for making salsa verde.

The rooftop garden also serves as a nursery for restaurant decorations.  I have a couple of crates of dwarf sunflowers growing up there that I will bring down to brighten up the vestibule, and and sometimes do the same with a particularly lively looking crate of  mint to greet the guests with its fresh aroma as they enter the restaurant.  During June, I regularly snipped beautiful lavender blossoms to decorate the front desk for Nicole and Bob.