Harvest Time!

The veggies are starting to roll in. I love this time of year! Just made a great spicy salsa with all these goodies. Mmm mm!

2012 Garden

The garden is loving the weather this year. We got an early jump to planting with our warm spring. And this past week of tropical heat has made everything take off. Can you believe the size of this squash plant?? It's taking over the yard! I have high hopes of lots of squash this year.

Remember last year when the deer visited? They came back again this year...Twice! I guess luckily for me they only ate the leaves on the cucumbers and beans and left the rest alone. My cucs (the 2 little plants in the left hand side below) are struggling. They have over doubled in size this past week so I am hopeful of at least getting a few by the end of the year. The beans aren't phased by the deer and are still thriving.

This is more squash and zucchini. Lots of vines! So excited. We picked our first 2 zucchinis today.

The first tomato is almost ready.

New to the garden this year is raspberries! We planted 8 raspberry bushes right behind the garden but only 3 have taken off. I'm a little disappointed but was pretty excited to see that we have one almost ripe one. I'll be surprised if we get more than a handful in total.

Some baby squashes.

Sienna helped picked the peas. She's pretty excited about harvesting the veggies but not so sure when it comes to eating most of them.

Modeling her glasses by the garden.

Early Spring Means...

...our garden is already producing! We had our first few asparagus popping up so we sampled them. Half were super tender and delicious. The other half were woody and stringy. No idea why that was. It didn't seem to matter the size. We'll have to see what the rest of the year brings.

...we got an early start on our deck! Since it's been so warm and the snow is gone, Justin's put in 3 good weekends on our deck. All of the framing is done. He started the stairs this weekend and hopes to have them and the decking done next weekend. Soooooo excited! I can't wait to have this done. And to have my husband back.

View from the patio underneath the sun room.

View from the back yard.

View of the stairs going up.

Fall harvest

With the freeze coming tonight, we hurriedly harvested all the vegetables we could from the garden. Another successful year! Looks like I'll be blanching edamame and wrapping green tomatoes all night tomorrow.

Butternut squash, cucumbers, acorn squash and peppers.

Tomatoes and edamame.

Bad Deer!

I was so excited with my garden after seeing yesterday's crop. Today Justin went out to pick the rest of the cherry tomatoes for our lunch and came back empty handed with bad news. He thinks deer have gotten into the garden. They ate the tops off all of my precious edamame plants and sucked off all the ripe tomatoes. I'm crushed!!! I don't know what to do now. Any advice? Will the edamame grow back? Is it too late to try and replant? So disappointing... And how do I stop them from coming back!?

My chewed off plants.

First crop of the season!

We finally got a decent batch of peas this year. We moved them from the big garden to the small one which seems to have worked!

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First Asparagus

2 years ago we planted our asparagus seeds. Everyone says the 3rd year you can start eating it. We're at year number 3 so we gave it a go! We had small stalks coming up that were looking like they need to be picked.

We cut a small bunch but enough for us to try.

And the results? Well, some of them were great. Tender and delicious, but a few of them had the consistency of a stick. You could hardly cut it and then when you tried to chew it, it was like eating sugar cane. Very odd. I'm hoping as the season goes on we'll get more tender ones. Still makes me excited since it seems like this state will never give us warm weather to plant anything else. :P

They're here!!

A tiny glimmer of hope for summer to come...my seeds!!

It's hard to tell from the pic but I have beans, peas, cucumbers, butternut and acorn squash. Of course my favorite edamame is on back order. Hopefully we get them by the end of the month. Since I haven't had a ton of luck, I decided not to start any seeds inside this year. I am going to buy the tomato, pepper and herb plants. We'll see if that works any better. Itching to get in that garden!

Garden

I haven't done any garden posts this summer. You could say with me being pregnant and the 90 plus days of heat and humidity, our garden got a bit neglected. Justin did his best to keep up but it still needed some TLC. We lost a lot of plants I think from too much rain too. Here's the latest crop, minus that bag of potatoes. There's also a big bowl of edamame in the fridge. Can't wait to try that!

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On the way to veggies

I haven't done a updated garden post in a long time and have been getting requests so here we go! I tried to be much better about thinning my plants and spacing them out than I was last year. New to my big garden this year I added edamame!! I'm very excited about those. I do need to thin them soon.

Tomatoes - which were started inside from seeds and peas.


Green beans (R) and Edamame (L)


My big surprise this year was this:

The garlic bulbs that I planted for last year (and did nothing) came back and started growing! So excited to see how they turn out.


Cucs, zucchini, squash and asparagus


In the small garden I was having problems with birds all over it and who knows what else. They ate all of my little lettuce plants, 2 of my pepper plants that I had started inside and worked so hard for, and were nibbling on some of the herbs! To protect my pants I had to buy this guy.


He seems to be doing his job so far. No missing plants and my lettuce is starting to pop up again.

Note to all my neighbors - or anyone really. My herbs are growing crazy. I keep trimming them back and throwing them away. So if you are in need of mint, chives, oregano or cilantro, please just come and cut some. Or let me know what you want and I'll cut some for ya. They are all labeled. The basil and parsley aren't ready yet but will be soon.

Veggie Time!

I was so excited the other day when I came home from work. Justin reported that our asparagus has started growing in the garden and it looks like it's going to be edible this year!! I know most asparagus says it takes a couple years before you can eat it. The stuff we bought said it's usually ready by year 2 to eat. Last year they were long stalks with flowers. Looked more like weeds. And this year...

Far away view – ignore all those weeds. They are thriving too :(

Close up. See those tips!

We also started some veggies indoors the other weekend – tomatoes, peppers, and herbs. They are coming along very well minus the cilantro. I just can’t get that stuff to take off!

Tomato close up.

Seeds!!!

Look what came in the mail today!!



(all the seeds in white if you need an answer) That means this weekend we can start our indoor planting. So excited!! We're doing it a little smarter this time and only starting the herbs, peppers and tomatoes inside. The rest can wait until outdoor season.

I am trying a new veggie this year. Edamame- maybe that's not even a veggie but we'll call it one since it's going in the garden.

Experiment #2

Justin saved the tomato plants that had fallen over last week. He was able to keep about half the plant by cutting off the tops and extra side shoots. He picked most the tomatoes from the cut stems giving us this huge bowl full.



Underneath all of the cherry tomatoes were a lot of green tomatoes. Cran has been telling me you can ripen them indoors by covering them in newspaper and putting them in a cool place. Seemed like this was the time to try the technique.

Tomatoes all wrapped up.




They are currently sitting in my basement. I'll check on them in a few days to see their progress. I sure hope this works! Otherwise I might be needing some good green tomato recipes...

Tomato Trees

Remember my baby tomato plants that I started as seeds in little trays last spring? They can now be called bushes, maybe trees. They've grown taller than the 6 foot fences behind them. Unfortunately with the summer being so cold and having weird weather we've only gotten a couple big tomatoes and a few small bowls of cherries. They are FULL of green tomatoes so hopefully this warm weather stays with us for awhile otherwise we will be trying the ripen indoors.



That picture was was taken a couple nights ago. I came home from work today and Justin told me my plants had fallen over. Turns out they got a little too big and couldn't support themselves. The cherry plant cages are tied up to the fence but the beefy tomatoes were not. Oops! Might have to try that indoor ripening a little sooner than I thought.



On another note check out some of the flowers that we also started indoors. They are huge!!! Looks like that experiment I started last March actually worked...

Garden News

We have our first veggies!!! Hopefully this is a sign that our garden is going to be producing soon. Most of the plants have flowers so I think we're off to a good start. I was so excited to go down today and see our first pea pods. 3 of them to be exact.


Zucchini was the first plant to have a veggie on it. It's been rapidly growing and here's how big it is tonight. I heard these things grow like crazy overnight so I'm curious to see when we actually harvest it. Time to read up on the next phase of gardening.


The jalapeno plant also has mini peppers on it. This plant I did buy from the nursery where the others all came from seeds so I'm not surprised that it's already producing. Aren't they cute?!


To follow all the garden updates go here.

Jamming and Baking

This is my rhubarb plant. And this is a picture after we have already used it 3 times! As in took almost all of the stalks out each time. It just keeps growing back. I thought their season was in June and then it was done. I can't claim to be an expert in this area by any means so maybe this is what it's supposed to do. I am starting to run out of rhubarb recipes though. First I made rhubarb cake and a rhubarb sauce. Then I moved onto a rhubarb, pineapple, strawberry jam.



Finally I tried a strawberry rhubarb muffin recipe I got from a food blog I follow. It was a great use of the fresh pick strawberries too. I made them gluten free though just by substituting my gluten free flour mix. I don't even like rhubarb that much but these were great!!



I also made a fruit pizza the other weekend for a bbq I was going to. I thought they turned out really pretty so I had to show. This recipe is from my mom. I think it's the best fruit pizza I've had. The cream cheese has an hint of orange flavoring and the pizza is topped with an apricot glaze. All the flavors meld well together. The crust is a shortbread. I wasn't sure how it would taste gluten free, so I made 2 pizzas: one regular and one gluten free. I didn't want everyone at the party to be my guinea pigs. :) Turns out they were both great, the gluten free one was just a little different texture.

Regular pizza


Gluten free

Garden is in!!

I haven't done a garden post in quite awhile and a lot has changed. About a month ago we planted asparagus seeds and they are really starting to come along. We won't get asparagus this year but hopefully by next year it'll be ready. Here's the plants so far.





We tried to plant our cucs, green beans and squash plants before we left for SC. (the ones we started indoors from seeds) They were getting too big for the containers so we thought it was time. Well not such a great idea. They were all dead by the time we got back. I think they needed a little more TLC. oh well. This past weekend we started over and did the whole garden with seeds. We planted squash, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans, peas, lettuce, garlic, and green onions.

Justin hoeing everything up.


The big garden full of seeds all marked with sticks.


Tiny lettuce plants. The first to sprout.


I also started the smaller garden. This one will eventually hold the tomato plants, peppers, rhubarb, and all the herbs. I'm still waiting for the plants I started indoors to get a little bit bigger before I plant them. The rhubarb is going strong (getting too big already) and I planted a couple herbs I got from my parents - mint, chives and cilantro.