Enjoying the produce!!

Well my garden is not as neglected as one may think from reading this blog, I just have not taken time to sit down and share. I have been enjoying cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, beans, and cauliflower from the garden.

A bucketful of fresh picked tomatoes - by the way all of those tomatoes listed in my poll are tomatoes in my garden.

A head of cauliflower.

Ready to fry up some zucchini.

A black krim tomato...or was this a japanese black triffel...

Some broccoli, cucumbers, zucchini, peas, peppers, and tomato from the garden.

Peeking Beneath the Leaves

The garden as it looked this evening. Currently I am enjoying a radish sandwich. If you are a fan of radishes, you should be disappointed that you didn't stop by this evening, because I was kindly sharing my radish harvest.

I have also enjoyed lettuce and chives...

For lunch today I had a cucumber

And this evening I even picked a green pepper.

Some other sights among the leaves....

Many Cucumbers to come.

Hungarian Wax Peppers

Tomatoes waiting to turn red.

More Peppers

Brussel Sprout nodes.

Cayenne Pepper

Radishes, Beets, and Swiss Chard

A Quick Tour of My Garden

I was a little creative with my garden layout this year --- but I also got a little carried away purchasing tomatoes (but that is a story for another time, just know that I have more tomatoes than I need.)

I planted my tomatoes in each of the four corners. I have a little rule that since I have a dozen tomato cages, I am allowed to have 12 tomato plants. Well I broke the rules and you will notice that I have some staked tomatoes. Then I have two circles of lettuce and onions, a circle in the middle of beets, radishes, carrots, and swiss chard, and two bean teepees at the other end. Along the edges, I have broccoli, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts on the left and peas and peppers on the right. This pictures was taken a number of weeks ago - the two plants just in front of the lettuce circles are cucumbers and I have already harvested 4 cucumbers and soon will have quite a few more.

Above: One of my staked tomatoes, between two cages.

Below: The peppers - including cayenne, thai hot, whitney, and king arthur, and hungarian wax.

My lettuce circle, with onions planted in the middle.

Weeds, weeds, weeds...

Last evening I weeded my garden, so if you stop by now it will look superb. If you would have come by over the weekend, you may not have known where to look for my plants. I have really been trying to keep it looking nice, but last week it kept raining and never gave the garden a chance to dry out. The one evening it was really nice, I went on a bike ride and didn't get home in time to do much in my garden. Oh well, it looks good now, minus the need to tie up my tomatoes to the stakes again.

Looking back at my posts it doesn't appear that I have shared anything about my garden this year so there is much to share. So here is what I did with my hanging pots.

The plants waiting to be planted. A nice variety of color.

When I emptied my pot from last year, I found a little friend. Perhaps I should buy a toad house...

All potted...

And up on the shepherd's hook...

I later added one pot I got at the greenhouse.

The one I got at the greenhouse is proving to be the most difficult to take care of. If you stop by this evening you may find my garden looking nice, but this pot of yellow not so nice. It needs watered everyday and it didn't like my weekend away, it is looking quite poorly. I watered it well and used some miracle grow on it, hopefully in a couple of days it will revive.

O Happy Day!

Spring makes me happy and today I enjoyed two wonderful parts of spring. I found some daffodils in my garden to brighten up my dining room and picked some rhubarb to enjoy. I missed one of my other favorite spring treats unfortunately - good old dandelion salad. (I was a little slow this year, .... and possible slowed up by cataract surgery as well as a concussion from a fall down the stairs - no more crocs in the rain, actually I think they will be relegated to garden shoes, no stairs between here and the garden).

Enjoying the daffodils...

A Blueberry Rhubarb Pie ready for the oven.

Also of note was the opportunity to use some of the parsley I have been growing in my window. My friend, Karine, from Brazil, made these tasty rolls at my house last week and happened to ask me if I had any parsley.... "why, of course" I said and picked some from the window sill.

Spring Sunshine

The verdict is in, I have officially decided that this is parsley and the oregano never bothered to spring forth from the dirt.

However, I fixed the problem by buying some new seed, so eventually I will be able to enjoy some dish with parsley and oregano.....oh and basil, the seed was near the oregano, ...yeah and dill, I am not sure what sort of impulse buy that was, ......oh yeah, and rosemary - it just smelled good. My own little window herb garden, they may one day outgrow their pots but for now it adds a nice touch of green.

The new oregano seed making a welcome appearance beneath the parsley.

Enjoying watching those little plants jump up out of the soil....

and watching them grow....check out those zinnias.

Uhh, yeah, I didn't plant this tomato, it was a gift from one of my patients, she didn't tell me exactly what kind of tomato it was, but she was thinking cherry tomato.

Another experiment....I am hoping a success, some would sa

y it is an easy thing to do, but it is new to me and thus a new sort of challenge.....but it has led me to have some fear....fear that my worms will die. Yes, I am drying out some vermicomposting.

A view of my worm bin after the worms have entered their new home.

A blurry pictures, but you can kind of see one of the worms.

Feeding my worms some chopped up broccoli found in the back of my fridge. (Perhaps I should get a veggie board like my sisters - at inkspotsandcoffestains.blogspot.com oh well, this way I have food for my worms).

The Herbs

Well I started the herbs in the Pasta Herb Kit my friend gave me, now it is waiting for those herbs to grow, so I can have them over for supper.

Hydrate the disc,

plant the seeds,

and watch them grow.

Uhhh.....is this the parsley or oregano???? Oh well, one day I will know.

Mmmm. Some recipes to look forward too.

Early signs of spring....despite the snow.

Winter Gardening

Seed catalogs....the gardener's long awaited treatment for winter blues. However if your eyes are good you might be able to read the CD on top is "A Little Drummer Boy". This catalog arrived, that's right before Christmas. That's okay, I was still excited and a little giddy.

However with the holidays, I'm not sure where it currently is .... I could use it about now. Just the other day, I heard someone say they had tomato starts in their window. Mine may be a week or two or three yet, but soon.

We will see if I start that or my new Pasta Herb Seed kit, a gift from my neighbor, with instructions for me to have them over for supper once the herbs are ready for eating. I need to get them started, because there can be no epic fail with conditions like that and I have eye surgery planned for the end of March and the last time I had eye surgery, my ambition dropped dramatically.

Another exciting thing is this rain gauge, I found at a discount store. I have been wanting to get a rain gauge, and I'm partial to dragonflies, so I could hardly pass it by. I have yet to decide where to put it.

Looking forward to playing in the dirt....