Harvest Monday(s)

 Welcome to Harvest Monday, a lovely idea hosted by Daphne.  Head on over and see what others are growing.

We've been a little hodge-podge on recording our harvests lately.  This past week we were out of town  exploring wonderful San Francisco. One of my absolute favorite places to visit.  The hubs needed to be there all week for work, and the rest of the family decided it was a good time for a little vacation.  But living in a hotel room for a week with two rambunctious boys, no matter how luxurious, is TOUGH!

Last Sunday morning was a flurry of activity as I put away things I had been planning on using during the week.  We had 2 small bell peppers that I julienned and tossed in the fridge.

 Some beans and cukes were made into fridge pickles.

Some nearly ripe cherry tomatoes were picked and left for my friend who would come by to feed the fishies.

2 enormous zucchini were shredded and tossed in the freezer.

And of course we had to pick more stuff... some Cherokee Purples, a Green Zebra, more cherry tomatoes, cukes and some beans.

A week of garden neglect produced some figs (so delicious!), some Roma and yellow wax beans,  a jalapeno, a big cuke.....and...

2 pounds 9 oz of tomatoes.

We also finally had some fruit set on our Yellow Brandywine tomato.  It has been shooting up to the sky, but we have had all blossom drop. And I came home to find 5 little green tomatoes.

And that's all for now, but stay tuned to see what we managed to do in San Francisco last week!  Happy Gardening.

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.

Harvest Monday - a little variety!

Happy Monday!  Thank you Daphne for hosting Harvest Monday, a wonderful opportunity to see what gardeners are producing all around the world.

We had some variety from what we are able to use from the garden this week. Temps are warming up and the plants are loving it, well, some of them are. The tomatoes are plumping up nicely and we had a LOT this week. I'm trying to figure out canning recipes that highlight their yumminess. Have any?

Harvest for 6/13-6/20:
Cherokee Purple Tomatoes: 3 pounds 11 7/8 oz
Strip German Tomatoes: 13 oz
Broccoli: 7/8 oz
Fairy Tale Eggplant: 2 1/8 oz
Fava Beans: 1 3/4 oz
Strawberries: 1 3/4 oz

I managed to snap a picture of the strawberries before the boys gobbled them up.

The heirloom tomatoes are so delicious and yummy, but they do have a bad tendency to crack if they get too much water. But I think it's worth it for the flavor.

Our broccoli never got very large, and I should have picked it Saturday, but I forgot and it started to flower. Maybe it will be a better fall crop, because so far I am not in love with the space/output ratio.

We had our first home grown favas at dinner last night.  We each had 1 bean pod (I shared with Ryle who amazingly enough decided to try something! He didn't like it, but heck, he tried it!!!!) grilled with olive oil and salt and pepper. Delicious. The hubby said it was far better than the last time he had favas (store bought.... probably old and past their prime).  I can't wait for more to mature, and I will definitely try this out as a fall/winter plant.

Stroll in the yard... erm.... Garden....

One of the first things Gray and I do every morning is to check out the yard/garden. He can usually wait until after breakfast, but some mornings he just wants to be outside.  This morning he decided it was time to pick tomatoes. He alerts me that it's picking time by shouting "ea' ea'" before heading towards whatever has caught his eye at that moment.  It is usually the strawberries or the sorrel. This morning it became apparent he was hungry for tomatoes. Cherokee Purples in fact.

So I went and started groping tomatoes. After giving a lot of them the touch test (and only smooshing 1 too much), we picked 2 pounds 7 3/4 oz of Cherokee Purples and 13 oz of the German Stripes!

We purchased a couple of cucumber seedlings from a local nursery because ours were getting nibbled by the bunny.  They are recovering ok now, so now we are growing 4 kinds of cucumbers... I am excited by this!

Purchased seedling of "Bush Champion"

Look at that cute gerkin!

And we started some Super Sweet 100 seeds this spring, planted the best, gave away one and had one as a back-up. Well, it is 2-3 inches tall and obviously thinks it is a lot bigger than it is, because it started flowering. So we gave her a bigger home and decided we would see how she does.

The yellow pear tomato plants doubled in height in 2 weeks, so they are now 6-7 inches tall. And no flowers. So maybe we get some this year and maybe not.

Our bean bed is finally starting to break ground.  We planted edamame, yellow wax, Roma, and asparagus.
The seeds for the edamame, yellow wax and Roma were planted directly into the bed, and the asparagus were started earlier.

Edamame bean breaking ground. Look how lush the bean pod looks.

The asparagus beans aren't much farther along than the yellow wax or Roma's.

 For fun Ryle was allowed to plant some pumpkins, mammoth sun flowers and watermelon.

Ryle's pumpkin

And yet another bean in the garden.... The volunteer Scarlett Runner already flowering.



That's all the fun stuff going on. The rest is every day stuff. Happy gardening all!

Harvest Monday June 13, 2011

Harvest Monday is a great opportunity to see what gardeners around the world are producing in their large or small gardens. It is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions. Hop over to see what is going on!

Lots and lots of random things going on in the garden this week. But the most yummy part were the tomatoes!  We had some ripe mystery tomatoes and Cherokee Purples. I think that the mystery ones may be Striped German.  Some of my windowsill Cherokee Purples riped up as well and we noshed on those too.

Harvest:

Mystery (Striped German?) - 3 1/2 oz

Cherokee Purple - 1 oz

Windowsill Riped CP - 14 1/2 oz

3 1/2 oz of mystery tomatoes

1 oz Cherokee Purple Tomatoes

 The Striped German were sooooo delicious. Yummy, sweet and firm. Not mealy at all. We had these simply sliced and unadorned.  As well as having fabulous taste and texture, they were beautiful inside.

Striped German

The color contrast between the German Stripe and the Cherokee Purples was stunning. We did notice that the windowsill riped tomatoes were slightly mealy and mushy compared to the vine riped ones. The flavor was the same, maybe they will make good sauce?

There are many more tomatoes ripening up and some more flowers. So I hope that there will be lots of fresh tomatoes to share with the family when they come visiting in July! Our recent warm weather will help with that as well.

Lots more to share with you all on the misc gardening front, but I will save that for another day. Happy Gardening all!

Harvest Monday!

Happy Monday!  Harvest Monday, hosted by Daphne's Dandelions is an opportunity for gardeners all over the world to show what is growing in their garden.



This week we did a lot of much needed work in the garden. And managed an accidental "harvest" of 2 pounds, 81/2 ounces of Cherokee Purple tomatoes. We put a new and taller cage around the floppy CP plant, and lost a few limbs and fruits, but they will ripen on the window sill and we will enjoy them.

We also FINALLY added soil (um.... compost) to our 4x8 bed. My ONLY raised bed. I am so excited and cannot wait to plant it up! AT our Memorial Day cookout, one of my friends mentioned that the city landfill also has a greenery section that you can acquire soil, mulch and compost from, at very low prices. SCORE. I was looking online and found a place that had "container soil" -- for raised garden beds, for $35 a cubic yard, with an $80 delivery fee.... So we asked our friend to borrow his truck (which led to the soil conversation) and managed to get a cubic yard of material for $12.  When we went to the landfill, they let us know that they did not have top soil, only compost or mulch. Well, we were going to need compost anyway, so we went ahead and purchased it. A quick search showed we could grow in pure compost (anyone have any negatives on this?  I've seen various posts about things accidentally growing up in compost piles.... so it's ok for plants right? Compost is added to soil to amend with nutrients and lighten soil....so this should work, right?).  The city kindly loaded up the bad of the truck and we worked the rest of the afternoon on moving it from the truck (front yard) to the back. The boys "helped" get the soil in the bed and break up any soil clumps from the original bed soil by throwing them against the house.

Before

After

And the compost that was left over

Now I need a drawing of where everything will be planted and apparently some more trellises if I want as many climbing plants as I envision.  Oh, an if I never have to add most of a cubic yard of soil to a garden again it will be too soon....

Happy Gardening all!

Harvest Monday 5/16/11

Happy Monday! Last week we did a lot of observing in the garden and I did a lot of regretting.  I really regretted not planting any lettuces when I saw all of the bounty my fellow urban gardeners were bringing in.  But maybe once I finally get the soil in the raised bed I can plant some there before the heat gets to be too much in SoCal.

Our harvest this week included  4 Tonda di Parigi Carrots (a petite sized round carrot we grew in containers), more peas (our plants are just about done and we need to just rip them out), and 3 1/2 oz of little Fairy Tale Eggplants.

I decided to conduct a bug search this Saturday since some critter was nibbling on my broccoli leaves.  What I found was nature doing it's thing.  A caterpillar entrapped in a spiders web and the spider hiding behind him after having taken a couple of nibbles our of him. I just left him to his dinner and help looking for others.

Unfortunately you can't see the spider hiding out. But this fat guy was making himself at home in my broccoli.

My earliest Cherokee Purple is really starting to change colors....soon!

And she has approx 30 friends for us as well.








Last week we finally planted the Japanese eggplant seedlings and the shishito pepper seedlings. Unfortunately the bunny discovered them the very same night.  He has been slowly nibbling away.  So our water/soda bottle garden is back. We don't drink many 2 liters, so I don't have really large bottles to protect the plants, so we had to make due with water bottles. Hopefully this will help until they get a little bigger and we can put up a bunny fence.

And for some reason the favas just keeled over. Seriously, just flopped over.  The stems feel strong and it was too early in the morning for the boys to have done them in, so I am confused by what happened.  I just tied them up to some bamboo and metal garden stakes and hope this helps. They are scrawny and only just starting to bulk up.

The smart pots we filled with red potatoes and my green zebra seedling finally got a home. I can't wait to see how each does in the new smart pots. They are some what uglier than a traditional pot, so I hid them by the fence.

And because I am just so amazed that it is actually growing, the sorrel again. We haven't picked any yet, no time to look up recipes to try out in the kitchen.

Now I'm off to go and fight with the pre-schooler about waking up and going to school. Happy gardening all!

Misc mental wanderings

So sometimes I forget things. This was a very rare occurrence pre-kids, but now it's almost daily.  I'm hoping that the boys turn out to be diligent in their studies and have great memories as a result of stealing mine.  I garden like I still remember everything.  Mainly  because those little plant markers seem to go missing when I stick them next to a new planting.  It makes it a little more challenging, but it's kind of like hiding presents for yourself all over the place as pick me ups!  And it makes failures less painful.  Because an open spot in the garden may have just been a spot that I missed planting and not a failed germination.  The glass is always half full, right?

So,what started me on the mental wanderings and trying to figure out if losing my mind was a slow process or if it happened all at once was the discovery of sorrel in my garden! I like reading about gardens and new a interesting new vegetables to try out.   Last year I read about sorrel.  I have ever used it but I LOVE lemons and anything lemony or citrusy. I have attempted to plant this 2-3 times in the past year, and they just never germinated, so I gave it one last try in a re-purposed plastic container. (Former toy holder that was set for the recycle bin when I decided the hole was a perfect for drainage ).  Of course I forgot what was planted there. I assumed when it started growing that it was spinach. We love spinach, and didn't have any growing, so of course I would have planted it.... right? Well..... the red tips on the greens made me wonder if it was spinach and a quick taste test resulted in a spinach like texture with a hint of lemon....SORREL!!!!! I can't wait to look up some recipes.

And keeping an eye on the tomatoes, one of the Cherokee Purples has some blush on it.  And it has set a lot of fruit that are sizing up nicely.  I hope there will be some when the family comes to visit in July.

Another view of my re-purposed container, so broccoli, carrots,scallions and the sorrel. I don't know if it is because someone smooshed the bunny with their car or the elevated growing area, but the broccoli has survived much better than my last attempt. My husband is certain I was the car wielding culprit behind the bunny smooshing, but I only saw him post smooshing. I swear!

And because you can never have to many herbs, and I can't pass up a deal at Big Lots, some window sill herbs. Just in case the 10-20 feet are too far to walk to snip some fresh herbs....

I'm not sure if your house is like this, but in the heat of summer we get a fruit fly invasion!  It's terrible.  So we bought Ryle a cool plant that can earn it's keep.  An Octopus plant.  It is a carnivorous plant that attracts insects using some nectar on its arms and then gobbles them using various enzymes.

And a cute "Sensitive Plant", I am hoping this plant teaches the boys to be gentle on the veggies outside!

And my dirty little secret...I still haven't put so in the beautiful raised bed the hubby built for me...Sigh...

Happy gardening all!