What's growing?

It's already summer and I've not done a garden post in a while. In fact, I can't remember when I last did one, but, then again, I can't remember what my kids birth dates are either sometimes.

So, here are some random photos of the garden.

lots of garlic (right) and onions (left) with tree nursery in front

kale in the foreground

alpine strawberries that some people claim are full of flavor, but I think they mealy

various lettuces

trying out a special weed cover made from paper

banana peppers

eggplant in the greenhouse

nopal (that we hope will grow big enough to eat one day)

Asian pears in the orchard

black raspberries

These photos were taken over a couple of weeks of end of spring and beginning of summer, so there's a mix of spring and summer veggies.


And finally, because I've preempted "My Favorite Scene" today, I feel like I should at least have a video, so here's one of the guys and the chickens:

So, how about you? How does your garden grow?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

It-that-has-yet-to-be-named

I don't think I mentioned it on this blog, but my friends on Facebook know that we bought a new tractor recently.

For those who were asking for picture of it, here's an action shot:

Stace (Stace's Space) named her Kubota "Tallulah-belle"; I'm thinking we'll just leave it as "it-that-has-yet-to-be-named", or "Voldemort" for short (though, come to think of it, it's more of a Darth Sidious coloration).

Now she's ready for her close-up, with hubby at the wheel:

But it's not all macho-tractor stuff around here.  There's also the other goodies, like this bounty from our garden (except the carrots) that hubby used to make a Thai curry dish for dinner the previous night:

Starting at the top, going clock-wise: kale, eggplant, basil, carrots, patty-pan squash, summer squash, and kohlrabi. Good eats!

Have a great weekend!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Autumn gardening

How did we commemorate the beginning of October? By gardening, of course!

If you're not out there weeding and planting and tending this time of year, you won't have a nice fall/winter crop to harvest. You don't need a fancy greenhouse either, just some row-covers if you plant cold-hardy crops. If you want to go the fancy greenhouse route, check out Eliot Coleman's books to learn more.

Here are the kids, weeding (before harvesting tomatoes and peppers); no, they don't always have goofy grins while weeding, but they don't complain about having to do it either:

So what are we weeding and tending to? Well, there's choi sum:

and lettuce:

and carrots:

and don't forget the cabbage (although that was planted a while ago) :

Another nice fall crop is kale. It's highly cold tolerant.  Hubby grew 2 different varieties this year:

We're also harvesting some end-of-summer crops like potatoes (no pic, sorry) and sweet potatoes:

Sweet potatoes as big as footballs (with the density of bowling balls) -

Here's a more mature choi-sum that hubby's been harvesting already:

Hubby re-planted some summer squash after vine borers killed our squash plants earlier this summer.  We've been getting a really nice harvest from them.  Both the patty-pans:

and the summer squash:

Because we needed room for the new plantings, hubby pulled out a bunch of volunteer dill plants and I hung them up to dry.  Who needs Halloween decorations when you have these?

I hope you're running a nice Autumn garden yourself!  Next up: tomato pie recipes.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Secret garden?

Hubby went out this afternoon - between periods of thunderstorms; boy, are we ever having crazy weather! - and picked a huge bag of kale!

I'm looking at it thinking "where the heck did this come from when last I looked at the garden, all our seedlings were under 3 inches tall??"

But here's this amazing kale, with leaves as big as my hand:

Yet the stems were tender:

Does hubby have a secret garden I didn't know about?  As it turned out, this was kale that self-seeded in the greenhouse and had grown up over the winter months.  I was in the greenhouse watering the seedlings last week when dh was at a conference, and I didn't even see the kale.  They don't call me Sherlock for nuthin'!  D'oh.

Hubby also picked the cilantro that had self-seeded in the greenhouse:

And we had both for dinner...wilted kale in an Asian marinade and a cilantro sauce for our home-made wontons.  Yum!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams