Happenings in my garden in July

Somehow I seem to miss harvest Mondays in July.  We are usually visited by family during the month, my oldest son and my husband are both July babies and we have family in to celebrate both birthdays. And even though you would think I would have more time to blog with someone to help wrangle the kids, I have less time than normal! So this is to play catch-up.

The first Japanese eggplant is nearly ready.  The ones we planted out first were chewed down to the nubs and haven't bounced back very well. This one was planted in our raised bed filled with city compost.  And if you were wondering, city compost sucks.  The plants we put in the raised bed kind of stalled out and I had to heavily trench fertilize everything to get growth jump started.

First Japanese Eggplant

The cucumbers we started from seeds are almost ready to give us some snackers, and maybe some pickles as well!  Our nursery bought cukes were heavily cut back due to powdery mildew. We will see if they survive.

Pickling cucumbers sizing up.

Our beans in the raised bed are also WAY behind schedule. But we have our first sightings of baby beans!  I have dreams of beans.... no, not really. But I can't wait to eat some home grown ones. We planted Roma beans, Yellow wax, Asparagus long, and Royal burgundy. Not to mention the Fava, Edamame and Scarlett Runner beans...

Roma Beans

Volunteer Runner beans need to be picked

The Little Gem lettuce is FINALLY sizing up.

Little Gem Lettuce

 My figs have been taunting me for weeks.  Still no ripe figs.  Our tree is heavily loaded this year and I can't wait!  I have prosciutto just waiting in the fridge for "go time."

Brown Turkish Figs



But wait, it isn't all taunting and teasing, we also ate good stuff from the garden this week too.   We had an unexpected night in for dinner and absolutely nothing planned. I think we were planning on going to "Wine Wednesday" at a local restaurant, but Ryle started acting up and we didn't want to have deal with him in public. So I had to punt for dinner. We had a pasta with shrimp, tomatoes, lemon juice, garlic, and fava greens. The greens were so good. It was my first time tasting them, and they did great in the pasta.

Oh, and we had some fresh basil for the pasta as well.

Another night we had black beans and rice.  And a lovely heirloom (Cherokee Purple) tomato salsa made with home grown tomato, jalapeno, onion, garlic, and pimiento de patron (since the jalapeno was not the slightest bit hot). And since there was just one tiny heirloom tomato, I made up a second batch with a store bought "vine ripened" tomato. The comparison was interesting.  The store bought tomato made a bland salsa, the Cherokee Purple was so sweet and complex simply amazing.  I cannot wait to make more.

Salsa fixings (sans Pimiento de patron - it was an after thought)

Rosemary - used to poach chicken

zucchini - that big one ended up being over 2 pounds

Zucchini and first crook neck squash

All in all it was a good week in the garden. I can't wait to start planning for my fall garden.  Well, today is a garden day for me, so I hope it will be productive!  Happy gardening all.

Harvest Monday 6/27/11

Harvest Monday is a great chance to see what everyone around the globe is harvesting.   It is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions. Pop on over if you have a chance and see what is growing!

This week we had an assortment of things come from our garden. We started with something to put back in, seeds! Some of my scallions planted early had flowered and were so pretty we just left them. And now look, we have seeds for planting!



Scallion seeds


Also from the garden we harvested German Stripe tomatoes, Cherokee Purple tomatoes, Sorrel, lemon grass and our first cucumber!

German Stripe: 10 3/4 oz
Cherokee Purple: 1 pound, 5 oz
Sorrel: 10 1/8 oz
Cucumber: 1 3/4 oz
Favas: 3 - unweighed



Sorrel and a carrot

The leaves are huge

Lemon grass

Lemon grass sliced - I like the rings

Thai chilis, tomatoes, and first cucumber!

Stripe German and Cherokee Purple Tomatoes

Fava beans

We had the favas grilled with dinner last night, in addition to a super delicious salad of slice heirloom tomatoes, mozzarella and basil (from the garden). The sorrel we attempted to saute with some bok choy and serve with fish, I thought the tart lemony flavor would pair well with the fish. It was a disaster. The sorrel did not cook up well, turned brownish and the flavor was too strong. Oh well, now we know. The lemon grass was minced and mixed into a Thai chicken salad - delicious!

I was so excited to see that first cucumber. I love fresh cukes and the first was long awaited.  But I'm not sure how many this plant will produce, I had been battling some powdery mildew, I thought I had gotten rid of it... but then I looked on the underside of the leaves. Blast! Covered. So off they went. The poor plant looked nude afterwards. So if this plant goes to it's maker, I have 3 other kinds of cukes in the garden to wait for.

Happy Gardning all.

Around the garden

I had a slight setback in getting better over the weekend.  I decided that I was "well enough" to go for a run with the kids this Saturday, kept it short and relatively slow. Sunday we had some friends over for a cook-out, and Sunday night I could barely function I was so beat down.  Monday I was in bed until 2 pm. When I finally managed to drag myself downstairs, some homemade chicken and rice soup, a coke, dayquil and Doritos (hey, we all have our guilty pleasures) made me feel closer to human. So now the hubs and my running hubs (we have run together for the past 6 years, and people we meet assume we are married, even though we have told everyone we are each married to someone else and my kids look NOTHING like him! It's always good for a chuckle. It doesn't help that we live within 10 miles of one another and carpool frequently) have banned me from running until at least Wednesday and probably Thursday. Boo.  So I think I might have to do some yard/garden work.

I have been bemoaning my crazy floppy Favas in my daily garden inspection. The ants have been running around on them like crazy, and since they didn't seem to be doing any harm, I just let them have fun.  The flowers are coming and going with no pods in sight.  When all the sudden I noticed something......

We have little fava bean pods!  Geeking out! It's the little things in life that I have to enjoy and get excited about.  SO now the wait begins.... daily checking and making sure that pesky bunny doesn't nibble! 

You can click on the photo to zoom if you want.  Sorry about the haziness,
picture was taken through the sliding glass door.

The bunny was the surprise hit of the gathering this past Sunday.  He came out multiple times during the day, much to the delight of the kids.  And now I am getting to borrow a BB gun from a friend's kiddo!  He he he, watch out Mr. Bunny!

This was his breakfast this morning. A green strawberry.

More wandering around the yard showed me something else I have been checking and waiting for.... broccoli!  Look close....Now the hard work to make sure no pests notice it's there.

And one of the clusters on the CP. Hmm....Soon my pretties!  I am extremely envious of everyone who grows lots of the same plant to freeze and can fruits and veggies for the winter months. Maybe one day we can be productive enough for that. But for now we are enjoying every taste of homegrown goodies.

And can you see the ragged ends of the sorrel?  That is not the result of some marauding garden pest on four legs.... that is from the two legged variety.  I often find them standing next to the container nibbling on little pieces that they tear off. "Hmm, Sorrel Mommy, tastes like lemon." Mainly the big one, and not to be outdone, the little guy copies him. And Daddy has to have a taste as well. Good thing we are organic!

Sorrel - after the kiddos discovered it.

And something pretty to end the blog today.

Happy gardening all!  Off to Target for more OTC meds and maybe the garden store if I can drag myself that far.

Harvest Monday, October 25, 2010

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions and is a great way to share what's coming out of your garden and see what other people are growing in their gardens as well! This week we are really just enjoying the garden (from the windows!).

This past week was very wet and rainy.  This is pretty unusual for Southern California, October is usually a very dry and warm time of the year for us (think wild fires!). So we stayed inside and hibernated, which was kind of nice. 

We harvested several handfuls of basil and flat leaf parsley (not pictured) and 2 3/8 oz of Fairy Tale eggplant.

2 3/8 oz of eggplant

The plants all seemed to enjoy the rain. Everything became nice and perky. Pictured below are the komatsuna on the right, the tatsoi hidden on the left, bunching onions and peeking out of the back is a ruby swiss chard. 

My pea garden (hopefully).  It's being drowned out a bit by the nasturtium growing behind the plastic bottles. But look closer....

That's a flourishing pea shoot growing next to that bottle! Maybe we will have some peas by early December. It would definitely be nice. The water bottles are protecting yet another batch of pea shoots that I am nurturing.

In the area where I pulled the corn we planted some fava beans. Since I wasn't sure if bunnies like fava bean seeds, I decided to go ahead and cover these guys up also to ensure that we don't get an even later start than this!

Bottle protected fava bean sprout

 They apparently grow amazingly fast because this is the same shoot 2 days later!! And I checked today, it wasn't nibbled to the ground, so yay!

Fava Bean sprout - 2 days later

I'm going to need some recipes for wild bunny stew by the way.  On the other side of the lawn I found some nibbles had been removed from my pin stripe eggplant and a tomato. Grrrrr!

Not cool Mr./Ms. Bunny. Not cool at all.