THE GARDEN PLOT:

Most of my vegetable gardening is done in two smallish beds, which are supplemented by numerous pots.

One of the beds is about 15 ft x 5 ft, with good sun (the long side faces south). Towards its eastern end is a rhubarb plant, as well as my main mint bed. I use a small area at the far eastern tip to grow fava beans every year, planting twenty or so seed beans close together in October. They all sprouted fine, as usual, and by now each plant is around 5 ft tall and densely flowered (the white and deep purple blossoms justify the beans' prominent position outside the dining area's French doors!). The beans will come in a few weeks, the first ones harvested as small green pods and cooked whole, the rest shelled and eaten at varying degrees of maturity through June. I leave a few of the sturdiest pods to dry on the plant and provide next season's seed. More on favas when we're eating them . . .

The rest of this bed is used for summer vegetables: tomatoes, summer squash, and pole beans (grown up a bamboo tepee). In fall I sow a cover crop of rye and hairy vetch in this area, which is then tilled in in early April so I can plant at the beginning of May. This year the plot holds 5 tomato plants: Carmello (2 of those), Principe Borghese (a great Roma type I liked last year), Moskvich (this year's "gotta try a different one"), and my favorite cherry tomato, Matt's Finest Cherry. Two summer squash: a Yellowstick straight yellow one, and a "Spacesaver" zucchini plant. The pole beans are Blue Lake, which I've stuck to in recent years (originally seed from Territorial, but now saved seeds from last year's crop). All those went in last week, the beans as seeds, everything else as seedlings from Portland Nursery.

The eastern end of this bed is flanked by our 2 fig trees in pots (grown on multiple stems, so they're only about 6 ft. high), a gooseberry bush (also in a pot), plus a few pots of herbs (silver thyme, marjoram, more mint, and something bitter I can't remember the name of right now).

The second vegetable bed is 12 ft x 15 ft, against the side of the house outside my office window, and faces west. So it's in shade in the morning, gets sun for some hours in the middle of the day, then is cast into shade again by the big walnut tree that dominates much of the garden. As a result, it's not a good spot for growing tomatoes or beans, but it does fine with greens and the less sun-demanding herbs. Permanent plantings include an aging rosemary, thyme, oregano (comes up like a weed), sage, winter savory, fennel (the leafy, non-bulbing variety), and lovage.

There's always some parsley growing in one section or another -- mostly it seeds itself -- and this year I've been growing as much chervil as I have room for, too, since I've read the Greeks use it as a pot green much as they do spinach or dandelion leaves. I'm looking forward to trying that. Late last summer I sowed a lot of chard in this bed, and it's been very productive this spring, though it's mostly used up now, and the plants bolted in early April. Still another meal or two to get from them before I pull them up, though. I also found some other seed fava beans and planted them at the back of this bed -- I think they're a different variety than the Sweet Lorane variety developed by Territorial Seeds which I've been using and saving in recent years, but I won't really know until the pods form.

Half of the central part of this bed was sown with "cavolo nero" in March -- three short rows of it, which will soon need thinning to maybe a dozen plants. This much vaunted "black cabbage" is regarded as essential for true Tuscan bean soup (it's also called "Tuscan black kale"), and cookbooks claim it's hard to find in this country, but as far as I can tell it's the same plant as the "lacinato kale" that began to show up in larger produce depts. a few years back. We'll see when it matures, but it certainly looks like the same species from the seedlings. Either way, it'll surely be good.

I sowed some bulbing (Florence) fennel in another portion of the bed -- looks like I have about 6 seedlings at this point -- it's supposed to be a heavy feeder, so we'll see how it does. So I only have a small amount of space still unsown, until I pull up the chard and tie back the favas, at which point perhaps I can sow some lettuce and arugula, which also do fine in this bed. For the time being, my only salad greens are in a rectangular pot about 1 ft square, half lettuce, half arugula.

Around this bed are more pots: a tulip tree we bought as a tiny seedling which is now 10 ft. tall and taking up the largest pot we have, plus a couple of tarragon plants (used some the other night in a fabulous bean dish that combines dried green flageolet beans, soaked and cooked, fresh string beans, and tomatoes -- taken from Deborah Madison's indispensable "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone").

As for other veg. in pots, I have 2 Japanese eggplants and a couple of (Italian sweet) peppers, plus a bush tomato plant ("Early Girl"). Last year I grew about 8 pepper plants, everything from bells to Anaheims to jalapeños. Haven't decided yet whether to get more than the two this year. This might be enough to take care of, given that everything has to be watered once (sometimes twice) a day through July and August . . .