First harvest

When we moved to "the country" one of my visions was to have a huge vegetable garden with fruit trees and vines. I'm not a hippy or an extreme environmentalist, but it really makes me happy to grow my own food. Reality struck however, and its just not possible to spend a lot of time in the garden. I have 4 kids - 4 young kids. I spend most of my time meeting their basic needs of survival. However, Joe did manage to dig 2 beds for us - 4' by 12' or 16', I can't remember. So I've filled these beds with transplants and seeds and praying that something will survive with little maintenance. So far, the crop that's growing the best is the clover. Nope, didn't plant clover. It seems to be the weed of choice around here. But there are a few plants growing out there as evidenced by the picture of my cute husband and oldest daughter holding the radish. It was a good radish too!

As a side note for those who are interested in gardening - We have a lot to overcome here. It is extremely windy and there are no neighboring houses to shield the garden from the winds. Also, the old dude who lived here before us was a big fan of Round-Up and he used it in agricultural strength and quantities. He seriously used it as his weedeater. He would spray a foot wide section on both sides of the fences and all around the perimeter of the house. I'm a believer in soil health and that stuff is just bad. So I've been doing a few things to help heal the soil like using Garrett juice and molasses for fertilizer.

I'm hoping to get out there and take a picture of current state of the garden. Right now I have tomatoes (sickest looking plants ever!), one red bell pepper plant, zucchini, yellow squash, green beans, brussel sprouts, broccoli, red cabbage, cauliflower, swiss chard (looking good! that stuff is easy!), spinach (not doing good, must be too hot), and a few lettuces.

Joe and I recently celebrated our anniversary and on that trip we bought a few plants for our family. We bought Mom 2 blackberry vines to say thanks for watching the kids, we bought 20 strawberry plants for fun and 2 blueberry bushes for each other. The blueberry bushes are going to be an experiment as they really need acidic soil and I have no idea the pH of our soil here. We actually managed to plant the strawberry bushes and they are taking off! Its nice to see one thing doing well out here.

Anyway, thats probably way too much information, but I will enjoy going back and reading it in the years to come.

The Garden - early October

I pretty much ignored my garden this summer, due to both the drought and my aversion to heat and hard work. Amazingly, some of my garden made it through the heat and neglect and since we have had some rain, its even thriving.

Right now I have okra, beans, red bell peppers, swiss chard, basil, multiplying onions, and eggplant. Mom also planted some tomatoes for me last week.

Oops! Let the okra go a little too long. Hoping they will soften up in some gumbo or something

The Garden - June 23rd

Here is today's harvest - lots of little orange cherry tomatoes, a couple of cucumbers, a zucchini, and the volunteer butternut squash. Gotta love it. There probably won't be much more in the future. Its just too hot and dry. If I have the energy and mobility, I'll start over in August!

Using the Garden's Bounty

Ha ha, I used the word "bounty" - I am a dork. This post is about using up large amounts of produce from my garden. If you are aren't interested in that or gardening, you will really not enjoy reading any further.

Outside it is hot and dry and my garden is winding down its production. We go on vacation in 8 days or so and my garden probably won't survive our 11 day absence. I am trying really hard to not let anything go to waste so I'm having to get creative so as not to bore Joe and Pete with lots of repeated meals. I bagged a bunch of onions and hung them downstairs in the laundry room closet. They aren't touching each other so I hope they make it until I need them! I am also going to try putting the extra zucchini and cucumbers in the Green Bags that a fellow MOPS mom recommended to me. They are supposed to double the shelf life of produce.

Earlier this week I made a yummy fresh salsa with tomatoes and onions from the garden plus some cilantro, jalapenos, garlic and lime juice. We added some guacamole and quesadillas made with leftover steak. Today I made tomato basil soup and a zucchini quiche. I think I'll keep both recipes.
Joe wasn't crazy about the soup, said it was a little tangy, which I think can be attributed to my homegrown tomatoes or slightly-past-its-prime basil. He also said he expected something like Campbell's canned tomato soup (bleh!) and that was definitely not my desired effect. Emily ate a little, but Maddie and I gobbled it up! I must have had 3 bowls. I made the soup as the recipe specifies - full of fat and cream because everyone here is trying to gain weight or at least not lose any. However, a lot of the comments on the recipe were about cutting the cream and butter and they were happy with the outcome.

The zucchini quiche was rich, but good and it used an entire large zucchini. I'd make it again because it was hearty and filling even though it was meat-free.

Here are some not so great, practically unappetizing pictures of our meal. I'm really jealous of all those great pictures on food blogs. Maybe someday I'll get a fancy camera!

Holy Zucchini - Garden - June 10th

It is a miracle! My zucchini plants are still alive and producing despite the evil squash vine borer. I thought for sure they would be dead by now. I can only attribute it to the Garrett juice and garlic pepper spray that Aunt Lorrie gave me! I'm usually too cheap to try new-to-me products but now that I've seen how well this works, I'll be buying my own next year. Thanks Aunt Lorrie! I usually pick my zucchini when they are young and tender but since we have been sick, a few stayed on the vine longer than normal. This is 2 of the 3 big ones. Longer than a foot and bigger around than a soda can. I used them to make stuffed zucchini but the after picture wasn't pretty enough to put on here. In fact, it didn't look good at all, but it sure tasted good!
The zucchini are sitting next to the tomatoes (from the garden of course) for bruschetta which is waiting for the addition of basil. I also made french bread on this day. Yum!


I know you were waiting on the edge of your seat for the outcome of that quinoa dessert I recently posted about. Honestly, it was disappointing. It took forever to get to the right consistency and in my impatience, I think I burned it a little bit. And there was just way too much spice. Oh well, I'll still eat it.

Lazy Sunday

Today was a lazy day, at least for us 3 girls. Joe took care of us, fixed some stuff at the duplex, and cooked us three meals. I'm starting to feel normal but now Emily is sick. Here are some of the highlights...

Emily asked me to take her picture, sick eyes and all.

Sisterly Love - Maddie climbed in the dog kennel and Emily promptly locked her in...

Veggie and beef kabobs for dinner - Tomatoes and onions from garden

Emily with the kabobs and a fake smile

White onions ready to be stored. Not sure how I'm going to do it yet. Probably dice some up and freeze. Not sure if the rest will keep, we don't have a "cool" place in the house here in South Texas.

Garden - June 5th

Everyone but Joe has been sick around here so there haven't been very many fun picture opportunities. I am home sick today and Mom has the girls (bless her). I am currently coked up on Tylenol and Robitussin DM and had a few minutes of feeling ok so I went outside to check on my neglected garden. Here is what I've harvested over the week. The green ball on the left is the mystery "squash" which is actually a canteloupe. It either fell off its vine because of weight or a bug munched it off. I don't think it was done growing on the fine so I'm not sure how the future will turn out for it.

And here is what harvested this evening. I have to pick the tomatoes before they are fully ripened or the birds attack them. There is one little white eggplant and you can just see the little butternut squash peeking out from it vine in the background.

Garden - May 26th

Here is the mysterious fuzzy squash. Still have no clue what it is...

Here is the harvest that day. I need to figure out what to do with all this cabbage...

Here is my little butternut squash volunteer. Its about 5 inches long. I hope it makes it!

Garden - May 20th

I'm finally getting back to my normal self and have some energy to garden a little everyday! I found this little fuzzy fruit or vegetable in the garden today. There are a few of them growing on a vine that looks like it belongs in the squash family. Yet another volunteer that I can't identify? Does anyone have a suggestion?

This was my harvest today - one cucumber and 2 onions. The onions are ready to be pulled and dried. They are just waiting on me to figure out how to do it and then actually have the energy to follow through.

It appears that the garlic pepper spray has made a difference in the number of roly-poly's that are munching on my plants. That is a good thing, but I'm afraid the damage by the squash borer vine has been done. I'm hoping to get three more zucchini before they win!

I have a lot of empty garden bed space but its already really hot and dry here. Does anyone have a suggestion on what I could plant in this heat?? I'm going to put in some okra, but I don't want that much okra!

Garden - May 17th

The summer heat has hit and my garden is showing the signs of stress. The broccoli, spinach and lettuce have gone to seed. Roly-polys are everywhere, eating anything and everything. The squash vine borers have attacked and I don't expect any of my zucchini or squash plants to last more than a week. Aunt Lorrie gave me some garlic pepper spray to try and I finally got it out tonight. She only lives 100 miles away and her garden is so much healthier so I was willing to give it a try. Hopefully it works! She also gave me some Garrett juice to try too.



BUT... on the good side - I have at least a hundred green tomatoes out there. I've harvested 1 cucumber so far, some lime green salad tomatoes, some cabbage, basil, dill, spinach, lettuce, green onions, broccoli, and 4 zucchini (one was huge like from my mother-in-law's garden). And the mystery squash was not a watermelon or a spaghetti squash but a PUMPKIN! The poor plant succumbed to the squash vine borer so we won't be getting anymore, but this one sure is cute! You can also see some empty space where I removed the remaining broccoli plants and 1 cabbage. I'm trying to decide what to plant there next besides okra - anyone have some suggestions? Its so hot and dry here...



These are multiplying onions I harvested this evening. When I bought them from our local Rainbow Gardens, there were only 6 little bulbs but when I dug them up today there were many more. I planted 3 single bulbs in different locations in my garden to see what would happen. According to the sign at the nursery, they should multiply again. You can also see some some carrots, a stray oak tree trying to grow and some rue.


Here is my cute little white eggplant. This is my first attempt at growing it so we'll see how it does and how it tastes. Somehow I managed to kill all my regular and Japanese eggplant plants which I'm pretty bummed about. Also, in the front of the picture are 2 little carrots. I think this is the first time I've ever successfully harvested any!

Garden - April 25th

This evening, as I was making dinner, I looked out the kitchen window and saw this:

My 3 favorite people working together to help make me a new garden bed! How sweet are they??

The picture below shows the mystery melon. Its growing fast! I'm thinking watermelon? Can anyone identify this?

Here is my garden this evening. Not too much to report but I do have quite a few little tomatoes of different varieties. I also found my first female cucumber bloom and there are some little female zucchini blooms growing and should be ready for pollination in the next few days.

First Baby Squash or errrrrr watermelon?

Here is the big volunteer plant in my garden and its the first of the squash or melon family to have a female bloom. Well, I'm not sure what it is, but I know its not a zucchini, yellow squash, or acorn squash because they all look differently. It seems big so I am thinking cantaloupe, watermelon, or spaghetti squash - something from the compost pile! I'll let you know as it grows. On a sad note, I found the 1st two pupa shells from the squash borer vine. Oh no! I'm keeping an eye out for their eggs and will remove them promptly, but its just a matter of time before they wipe out my crop.

Here is another shot of the garden. You can see the volunteer plant on the right bottom with a few big yellow blooms. Tomorrow I'm going to pull out two of the three Brussels sprouts plants so I can use that space for something else. I'll leave the last one in the ground for next year as an experiment. Time for me to eat some green onions!

The garden on April 7th

More pictures of my garden. Yet again, I took the pictures at the worst time of day as far as lighting goes. Here is a closeup of the big bed.

Here are the smaller beds and the border bed in the background. Almost everything in these beds I started by seed indoors. This is my first attempt at this and so far I'm not that impressed. Seems like they are all stunted. I've had better luck planting staight into the ground. Joe's mom has great luck with starting seeds inside, so I'll have to compare notes with her later. Maybe I need to fertilize?

Here are my containers - basil, patio tomatoes, dill, zucchini (to be moved to front yard in hopes of escaping squash vine borer), lime green salad tomatoes, and a new hybrid that my neighbor bought for me. The container in the back is self-watering and I had great luck with it last year.

Our garden

We haven't had time for much nonessential activities lately, but one thing I make sure we have some time for is our vegetable garden. Here it is in Mid-March. Most everything in the smaller two beds were seedlings so they aren't visible in the photo. Excuse the quality of the photo. I hope to post a current pic of it soon.

The picture above is the early spring garden with broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, onions, leeks, and one celery plant. The only thing I have grown before is the broccoli. Hard to mess it up. The cabbage and brussel sprouts are struggling with an aphid infestation. I don't see too many aphids now, but I wonder if the damage has been done...

The picture below is what I harvested that same day I took the rest of the pictures: spinach, head of broccoli, and a green onion. The girls and I ate it all that night for dinner. Poor Joe had to work late.