Here's a first look at the herb garden planted this weekend on the 7th-floor terrace of Baltimore's Harbor Court Hotel on Light street.
The 600-square-foot herb garden consists of over 403 plants and 26 different varieties of herbs, edible flowers and tomatoes.
The hotel's culinary team isays that in a few months, customers will be dining on on herbs and vegetables harvested just a few minutes earlier as well as cocktails made with the freshest mint.
Photo credit: Flickr/frenkieb
Of all the cooking chores associated with harvest time, making pesto might be the easiest.
(Pity my friend Betsy. Her husband and sons hunt in the fall, and she has to find something to make with everything from doves to deer.)
Anyway.
My modest little basil plant has not produced much more than what is needed for the occasional salad caprese. So I have been buying bouquets of basil at the farmers' market on Saturday morning and making pesto on a quiet weekend afternoon.
Helen Yoest of Gardening with Confidence has been doing the same thing. Follow this link and you will find not only a pretty good recipe for pesto, but step-by-step photos of the process.I freeze my pesto in small containers, and I don't put the Parmesan cheese in until I am ready to use it.
You can also reserve a little olive oil and spill it on top of the pesto in the container. It will prevent the bright green sauce from turning brown during defrosting.
Then, on a Sunday evening in the dark night of winter, you can make a little pasta or some salmon and have the taste of the garden again, if only for a moment.
Susan Reimer has spent 16 years writing about raising kids - among other topics - in her column for The Baltimore Sun. And every time son Joseph or daughter Jessie passed another milestone - driver's license, college, wedding or a move to a new military duty station - she has planted another garden. Now she will be writing about those gardens - and yours - here on Garden Variety. 
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