Late summer harvest

Tags

Gardening, postaday2015, vegetables

   
 
  
   
   
Late summer harvests are always so welcome, it’s a last hurrah for great vegetables. My husband and our children did a fantastic job of keeping the garden not only alive, but thriving during the rainless three weeks I was away, no small feat. I was able to bring a nice bagful of vegetables to my mother this week, the queen of vegetables, she was duly impressed.

I learned quite a few things this year with our vegetable garden and next year it will be not bigger, but more diverse and better organized. The most important lesson I learned was space in between plantings is a huge element in the success of your crop, something I will be very mindful of next time. I also learned  that propping up your tomato plants is not a choice, but really a necessity and I need better fencing to keep my omnivore pooches from snacking on my vegetables.

I can’t wait for next year. 😀

Tomatoes are turning towards red

Tags

postaday2015, vegetables

   
 
As soon as I got back home, unpacked the car, said hello to Jack and Lulu, put things away, watch General Hospital, I got my iPad, went out back and started to document how my vegetables have grown.

My tomatoes are coming along very nicely, I picked a cucumber, two heads of lettuce and my husband picked a green pepper, I think it was actually a poblano pepper. My husband loves making his salads, what is especially nice about having a garden, is going outside, twisting a ripe head of lettuce, grabbing a cucumber, a pepper or two and soon, as many tomatoes he likes in his salad, coming back inside and throwing it all together. Of course after washing and drying everything.

   
    
 
   
   
As you see I am awash in yellow squash, however I recently read about pickling squash instead of pickling cucumbers, I think I’m going to do that, I have a plan of action, well at least for one vegetable. lol

My first harvest

Tags

gardens, postaday2015, vegetables

This experience growing my own vegetables is so very different from the last time; last time I hadn’t a clue as to what I was doing, I especially didn’t appreciate the importance of location or sun exposure, morning versus afternoon, full shade versus dappled shade, it is so much more rewarding this time around.

Our first head of green leaf lettuce grown by yours truly, tonight’s salad will be interesting, it will remind me of eating salad at my uncle’s house, my aunt right before lunchtime would go outside in the back with her sharp knife, cut a lettuce head from the base and leave it to soak in cold water for a bit, spin it around and dress it up with her own vinaigrette.

I wasn’t expecting this many squash to be ready for harvest, I knew there were two big enough to be picked, but as I went through the larger squash plants, each one held at least two primed for the picking. I have so many squash plants, most are still small, so this is just the beginning of a long growing season, if the weather holds up like this until mid fall, I could be picking vegetables for a while.

It’s fun when your plants cooperate. lol

Progress in the vegetable patch!

Tags

flowers, gardens, postaday2015, vegetables

   
    
 I have cute little cucumbers growing! They are a first for me, as is the very pretty aubergine blossom, I’m not sure how long it will take for that blossom to develop into an eggplant, but let’s just say I’m excited. The yellow squash are growing and mulitplying by leaps and bounds, I may be forced to start baking squash breads, squash cupcakes, squash brownies, basically find a creative flair to deal with endless squash later this summer. lol

My orginal balloon plant bloomed yesterday:

   
 
It got so big and tall as opposed to last year, not that it was small by any means, but I didn’t expect it to get as tall as my large hosta to the left of it. I’m so happy with it, there are so many buds, it’s going to be gorgeous for quite a while, it’s a present that keeps on giving.

Some progress in the vegetable garden

Tags

blossoms, gardens, postaday2015, vegetables

   
    
   
My first yellow squash blossom! If I had been here during the week, I might have done somethig with the one blossom, but now thinking about it, I seriously doubt it. Blossoms mean vegetables and right now, I have a lot of blossoms, so theoretically, it means a bumper crop for me. I am hoping for many, many eggplants; my mother will be very happy, eggplant is her favorite.

The peppers are looking quite healthy and happy; the cucumber plants  are getting bigger and the lettuce seems well established where they are; all in all this patch of soil is doing wonders to what I planted, much better than the area I had tilled almost twenty years ago. I am so excited.

   

  

  

  

I have new roses to photograph, my daisies are coming up and the lilies are out in force everywhere. It smells very nice outside in my garden. I am blessed.
  

60 days from now

Tags

garden, perennials, postaday2015, vegetables

I now feel a little anti-climatic, I was busy, busy today, I planted and planted to my heart’s content. Now I have to wait and wait, water of course and weed, but for the most part, I have to be patient and wait.

   
     

Now it wasn’t all vegetables and lettuces, I did give in to my love of perennials and picked up a few for the poolside area and I grabbed several flats of pansies because they were on sale. I think that I spent at least 9 hours working the dirt and wow am I moving slow right now. I don’t look forward to tomorrow morning, getting out of bed, I may very well be limited to a crawl for a bit. lol.

   
     

   
     

I may be tired and achy, but I feel great with everything that I accomplished, working the dirt is good for the soul.

Building a vegetable garden

Tags

garden patch, postaday2015, sunlight, vegetables

      

I haven’t planted a vegetable garden in ages; I think the last time that I planted tomatoes had to be over five years ago. The reason I am doing it this year is because we had two trees taken down, they had been doing very poorly and so now I have a brand new direct sun filled area, perfect for planting a vegetable garden.

I remember twenty years ago, when we had just moved in to the house, the concrete pad right behind my gorgeous rose bush hadn’t been poured yet, it was an empty plot of dirt, perfect for a vegetable patch. I had borrowed my mother-in-law’s tiller and tilled the soil, I had planted rows of peppers, eggplant, tomatoes and herbs. I had a fairly nice tomatoe harvest, but everything else was disappointing, if only because my patch didn’t have enough hours of direct sunlight. My one eggplant was maybe three inches long and my two peppers were adorable minature peppers.

This year I hope to have a lot more success with the new placement, so that is why I bought a bunch of tomatoes, red peppers, green peppers, yellow squash, one eggplant and several cucumbers. I hope that I didn’t get too excited or too ambitious. lol

I don’t know if you noticed, but at the end of the garden patch, I have an entire back row of blueberry bushes planted, this is a first and I am crossing my fingers that they take and produce at least a handful of blueberries this summer, if only to compliment the abundance of wild strawberries I have ripening throughout my backyard.
In other news, my new lavender is pushing up blossoms and my rose bush is ablaze in roses, it smells heavenly outside.

   
 

Weekend soup making

Tags

postaday2014, soup, vegetables

When we were at the supermarket yesterday, I noticed the leeks right away, I found them to be larger with a lot more white to cook with than what I have seen lately, which is why I snatched them up. My immediate thought was leek and potato soup. Soup, or I should be more specific most soups, are relatively easy to make; sauté an onion until translucent, add your vegetables, then your stock and herbs and simmer; puree or not, it is up to you. Personally I prefer my soups pureed because I love the thickness. Leeks are one of my favorite vegetables because they are very versatile and I love their subtle, elegant flavor. I think that it is precisely their subtle flavor that makes them so nice to incorporate into soups, stews, quiches and omelettes.

The kitchen smells very warm and inviting, having soup simmering on the stove makes one forget about the cold outside even though today is relatively warm for a day in December. I would not mind it at all if it remained like this until Spring. I would still make soup because soup feels wonderful once the thermostat dips below 50 and we are going to be south of 50 well into April. So I have a lot of soup to make in the coming months.

Thoughts of an upcoming autumn season

Tags

chicken stock, homemade, postaday2014, vegetables

One of the first things that brings the start of autumn season to mind is when I start thinking stock and soup and today I am going to be making two stock pots of chicken stock. One will be for the freezer and the other will be to make a Vietnamese chicken noodle soup, full of the cellophane noodles, cilantro, chives, mint, black mushrooms, bean sprouts and of course chicken; if I really wanted to go all out, I would add tiny shrimp and sliced omelette with perhaps a water chestnut or two. That is what is so nice about great chicken stock, it provides you with a canvas and you can add whatsoever you have on hand to add the wonderful flavors and textures that produces a masterpiece of a soup ready for you and your family to eat.

Today I did the usual steps to make chicken stock; I gathered the herbs, I cut up the vegetables and I decided to roast the chicken thighs for a bit before adding them to the pot. As you can see I chose to use fresh sage, thyme and oregano from my garden and I studded the onions with cloves, the bay leaves I had in my pantry, I peeled several cloves of garlic as well. Theoretically with all of these wonderful ingredients the chicken stock should be rich and flavorful in about four to six hours.

While I was puttering about in the kitchen, Jack was sitting next to the refrigerator reminding me that he was hungry; he is always hungry and that position of his, is pretty much how he spends much of his day, if he isn’t laying on my lap that is or sitting by the window surveying all who walk by, occasionally barking to remind everyone that he is watching and earning his keep.

Experimenting with growing leafy greens

Tags

greens, peppers, postaday2014, vegetables

I haven’t grown anything besides herbs for quite a few years. The last time that I grew tomatoes, I had to wait until September to harvest the four or five ripe ones that made it that year, and that was at least three years ago. I think that it was the year of the tomato blight in Western Massachusetts. Before that year, I had grown tomatoes and basil together for quite some time, I had tried to grow squash, eggplants and peppers, but to no avail. One of my fellow Blandfordites has a wonderful vegetable garden and around August time, she puts up a farm stand by her house and that is where I do as much of my produce shopping until he end of September when she closes up shop.

When I was at Agway last, about two weeks ago, the cashier gave me four little pods, two Bibb lettuce, one spinach and one red pepper. When I got home I followed the directions and put them into one of my big planting pots and I have been keeping the soil and the pods moist ever since. I didn’t have much faith that they would sprout, but as you will see in the pictures, I am getting actual greenery and I am so excited!

I am curious as to how long it will take for peppers to appear, the greens are well under way, but I think that the peppers will be trickier; from what I remember, pepper plants are temperamental, I think. Who knows, it is fun to watch and see them slowly grow.