Garden: Harvest Time

It's time to start finding some new things to plant in our little garden.  Yesterday, Cayne "harvested" all of our potatoes (they look great and we fried one to taste and it was tender and delicious) and we've been enjoying the lettuce and zucchini for a while now.  The carrots are still growing good and the zucchini plants are still producing but I think we picked the last of our lettuce the other day.


So far the tally is:

• 20 red baby potatoes
• 2 zucchini (and 3-4+ more on the way)
• a few bunches of lettuce/mesclun (enough for about 6 salads, and some sandwiches/hamburgers)
• carrots (TBD) 

Our bibb lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cabbage, herbs, and cantaloupe didn't grow.  One little tomatoes plant is finally starting to grow.  It might be too late for it to actually produce anything this summer but we'll see. Was it worth it?  Well, maybe not monetarily because of the expense to get it started (the soil, container, etc) but it has been a fun experience and what we did get tasted great.  If we keep it up, it will definitely start being more cost-effective, since the seeds (or plants, which is probably what we will use next time) are cheap in comparison to buying at the store.

CSA, Week 8 and Week 9

I didn't get last week's CSA details posted so this week I'll show what we've received and what we've been cooking the past couple weeks.

Week 8 CSA Share

Week 8: 

• cucumber
• eggplant
• purple bell pepper
• purple cabbage
• 3 tomatoes
• 3 yellow squash
• 4 ears sweet corn
• onion
• 1 pint blackberries
• 2 pints blueberries (fruitlovers)

Week 9 CSA Share

Week 9:  

• cucumber
• 3 red potatoes
• 3 tomatoes
• 4 yellow squash
• eggplant
• green bell pepper
• lettuce
• onion
• green beans
• purple cabbage
• pint blueberries
• 2 pints blackberries (fruitlovers)

Here's how we used the Week 7 and Week 8 shares:

• oven "fried" chicken (Cayne had to cut our whole chicken into pieces for this one):  chicken from our meat CSA, corn on the cob (on the side) 

• fried green tomatoes:  green tomatoes (these were delicious...neither Cayne nor I had ever had them before!)

• Rolled Stuffed Eggplant (we made this twice because it was so good) -- from The Joy of Cooking:  eggplant
• Pasta Primavera:  tomato, squash, zucchini, onion, carrots, kohlrabi, green bell pepper, purple bell pepper
• Cabbage salad (From Asparagus to Zucchini Cookbook):  cabbage
• hamburgers:  ground beef from the meat CSA, tomatoes, lettuce from our garden, onion, corn on the cob (on the side)
• sandwiches:  tomatoes, lettuce from our garden
• mozzarella stuffed sausage meatballs:  ground hot sausage from our meat CSA
• tacos:  ground beef from our meat CSA, onion, tomato (BTW, Trader Joe's taco seasoning is the absolute best taco seasoning you can buy...and their taco shells are great too)
• lasagna:  ground hot sausage from our meat CSA, ground beef from our meat CSA, (squash and zucchini in one of the lasagna pans I froze)

• Coffee/Crumb cake:  blueberries
• vanilla almond fruit tart:  blueberries and blackberries
• babyfood:  yellow squash, zucchini, and pattypan squash
• I also froze some chard and kale using my Foodsaver

We still need to use the potatoes, onion, cucumber, and a few of the berries from last week but we did a pretty good job making a dent in that box.  We also have 2 heads of green cabbage and lots of tomatoes from our DWI box to use up.  Time for some BLTs and some tomato/basil/mozzarella salads!  I also need to make a new batch of pickles using the cucumbers from the past couple weeks.

Our Garden is Growing

Our garden on June 10, 2011

The garden we planted a while back has really taken off.  Everything we planted is growing except for the tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, and the heads of lettuce.  I think we should have bought tomato plants instead of trying to grow from seeds (but the day I went to Lowe's, they had their garden center gates closed and the plants were outside so I couldn't get to them and decided to try seeds instead).  But the potatoes, carrots, zucchini, and mesclun have really taken off!

Gardening, Take 1

A couple of weeks ago, Cayne put together a 4x4 raised bed garden for us to try to grow some of our own vegetables this summer.  I planted seeds last week and we were excited to see some green leaves sprouting through the topsoil so soon!  We planted tomatoes, red potatoes, broccoli, cantaloupe, zucchini, lettuce, and carrots.  We also have some barrel planters where I've put some herb seeds (oregano, cilantro, basil, rosemary, parsley, and tarragon) -- those haven't sprouted yet though.  We hope to have some delicious vegetables to put with our CSA vegetables this summer!

We're going to have to thin our some of these seedlings soon!

Our herb barrels

I also bought a bunch of mulch at Lowe's when it was on sale 4 bags for $10 to finally try to make our front landscaping beds look decent (they've been neglected for a couple of years, I think).  Cayne started with trimming some of the shrubs in the front and I finished the job (trying to make the bushes look nice and round -- it's harder than I thought it would be!).  Then I weeded and added our new mulch.  So far, I've only done one bed -- I'm waiting for Cayne the edge the other ones before adding the mulch with his new birthday present (the Stihl Trimmer)...and I ran into an ant nest while weeding one of the beds so I have to finish that up as well.  However, the one bed I did finish (the main one in front of the house) looks awesome compared to how it looked when we moved in!  Now I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the mulch really will keep those weeds down all summer long.

The finished bed.

This makes the house look so much better!

A view of our house from the street.

This is the bed that still needs edging, mulch, and a little more weeding.

A little much will make a big difference here
 (and Cayne needs to trim that holly bush -- it's too tall for me!).