What to Grow Now | A Kitchen Container Garden
You don’t need an enormous yard, a network of raised beds, or even a green thumb to grow some of summer’s most flavorful kitchen staples. You will, however, need a sunny balcony or patio and a mix of oversized terracotta pots and garden urns with good drainage, and preferably filled with a rich potting mix, a bit of compost, and a slow-release organic fertilizer like Espoma’s Garden-Tone. For instant gratification, skip seeds and pick up a few healthy vegetable and herb starts from an area nursery like Halsey’s Farm & Nursery, Eastland Farms, or Peconic River Herb Farm.
While there are countless plant options for a container garden, summer would hardly feel complete without at least one hefty pot overflowing with fragrant Genovese basil and one or two dependable cherry tomato plants, such as the classically sweet ‘Husky Cherry Red’ and orange-hued ‘Sungold’, which produces candy-like fruit into September.
You’ll likely want a few culinary herbs like Italian parsley, chives, dill, rosemary, tarragon, and thyme, but don’t overlook extras like garlic chives, summer savory, lemon verbena, pineapple mint, or pollinator-friendly African blue basil, whose lavender blossoms bees adore. Also consider edible flowers like bor-age, ‘Orange King’ calendula, airy bronze fennel, and citrusy signet marigolds. They attract beneficial insects and add a pop of color and subtle flavor to summer salads, cocktails, and desserts.
While tender lettuces often bolt by July, heat-tolerant greens like Nero di Toscana kale, cucumber-flavored salad burnet, frilly purple mizuna, and lemony red-veined sorrel can quickly be grown from seed, especially when grouped in containers that get a mix of sun and shade. To keep the greens coming, reseed the same pots every three weeks to ensure successive harvests well into autumn. And bear in mind that containers can dry out quickly in hot weather, so water regularly, if not daily. — Monica Michael Willis
SAVE THE DATE
Tuesdays in July Concerned about your roses? Want a greener lawn? From 3 to 4:30 pm on Tuesdays, horticulturist Paul Wagner of Greener Pastures Organics will be on hand at Bridge Garden in Bridgehampton to answer garden questions and offer free advice on everything from fruit-tree pruning and vegetable gardening to composting and organic lawn care maintenance; peconiclandtrust.org
July 24 Celebrate art and nature at LongHouse Reserve’s Summer Benefit in East Hampton. There’ll be cocktails, food, live music, and dancing under the stars in the nonprofit’s breezy sculpture gardens, plus an auction featuring works by renowned and emerging artists.
Through September 7 At Old Westbury Gardens, LEGO fans can take in Nature Connects, artist Sean Kenney’s dazzling exhibition of 17 larger-than-life sculptures built from more than 300,000 colorful LEGO bricks. Expect a supersized zebra, rhino, and polar bear on the grounds, plus whimsical garden scenes, including a gravity-defying hummingbird hovering on the edge of a flower, a red fox on the hunt, and a birdbath populated by squirrels, cardinals, and bumblebees.
A GREAT READ
In The Gardener’s Mindset (Clarkson Potter; $30), Stephen Orr, the former editor-in-chief of Better Homes & Gardens, reflects on the many ways plants shape our emotional lives, beginning with the roses he tended alongside his father in Abilene, Texas. In a series of witty, deeply personal essays, Orr explores everything from sustainability and seed saving to the pleasures of blowsy British cottage gardens, Great Dixter, Vita Sackville-West, and binge-watching Gardener’s World. Part memoir, part meditation on what draws people to gardening in the first place, the book traces Orr’s evolution as a gardener through Manhattan, upstate New York, Iowa, and Cape Cod, where he now gardens with his husband near the sea. The gorgeous photography—all shot by Orr himself—only deepens the book’s underlying message: Gardens nourish far more than landscapes. —M.M.W.
