Why I Love my Veggie Patch

Tonight I opened the fridge and found nothing to eat but leftover mushrooms and noodles, so Brent and I headed out to the garden with a bucket for sides - lo and behold, we had a feast in less than 45 minutes flat!

Tonight's favorite was fried summer squash and okra. I tossed it in a bit of melted butter than into dry Jiffy Cornbread mix and fried it in a pan with 1/8" canola and olive oil for a few minutes on each side. Steamed baby carrots and green beans were excellent with just a bit of kosher salt and black pepper. Add a few glasses of milk and some rolled deli turkey on the side -voila! One random, yummy meal complete!

We also found a bunch of green tomatos attached to broken limbs, so we brought those in, sprinkled them with a mix of salt, sugar, and tarragon plus a pinch of cayenne, then added herb vinegar over the top - they taste great now, hours later. They'll be so good on salad tomorrow!

Preston plans on picking the last of the potatoes for grilling tomorrow at our Fireworks BBQ - we found a yummy spinach salad recipe that has roasted potatoes and bacon "to serve on the side". He's such a little foodie!

Dylan is happy Donny and Marg will be bringing Jake for the grill, even though he's sure to only eat hot dog after hot dog after hot dog :)

I may have to transplant some of my perennials into the potato bed just so it doesn't look so bare - or maybe I'll move the few okra that are getting off to a slow start - they are dwarf, so the 2' raised beds won't make harvesting too tough.

I'll have to post a photo of our sunflowers. Each plant has 10-20 blooms sized between 8-24" and LOADED with yummy seeds for the birds. Also, we're up to 2 watermelons and 12-18 (now tiny) butternut squash. Once our cucs get going, they're bound to keep us busy for months.

So exciting! If these mild days continue, it will be much easier to spend time out in the veggie patch. Here's to hoping for continued bountiful harvests well into autumn.

Enjoying the first salad harvest of the season

It's been a day full of dirt-hauling, veggie planting, sledgehammer swinging, and thunderstorm dodging, but most of the planting beds are finally in!!!

The potatoes have already been hilled up twice, and today I added sages and basils to the thriving lettuce and potato beds.

The lettuce bed is producing mixed leaf lettuces, romaine, radishes, onions (I'm pulling the 2nd and 3rd in each row to use as green onions now), pansies (so yummy), brussels sprouts, carrots and marigolds (started from seed in glass canister greenhouses). Marigolds are the only item missing from our dinner salad - technically, we could've eaten them too. Even the carrot greens wound up in the mix. I have never enjoyed a salad more. However, the yummy beef and turkey burger with jack cheese was the icing on the cake!

I started the morning adding Columbines and Dianthus to the front garden in shades of plum and berry. Then I moved to the veggie garden and dug in the herbs: basil, pinapple sage (possibly my favorite plant of all time), cilantro, flat-leaf parsley, and dill. We had to finish the ground-level beds before I could plant the okra for Dylan. My son absolutely loves okra - pickled, pan-fried, sauteed, and fresh off the vine. We're going to interplant the okra with butternut squash and peppers. We dried the butternut squash seed from a squash we ate around Thanksgiving - it was so tasty! When he asked if we could plant it, I said, "why not? We can give it a try!" Thankfully those glass canister greenhouses are working like a charm. We have artichokes, delphiniums, more marigolds, dill, purple coneflowers, and a few more I can't remember ready to plant.

I've tried artichokes from seed for five years, and this is the first time I've had any grow to these heights. I've only successfully grown one delphinium from seed, but it was a beauty! Of course, it didn't survive that winter :(

My nephew and his family planted tomato seeds and wound up with a giant harvest, so we're excited to dig those in after a few weeks. I transplanted them with my neice yesterday, and they're doing great in their new pots. We've got a six-pack of cherry and another 6-pack of another species - no clue which!, but that's no matter. I cheated a bit and ordered a few tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers from Burpee.com. They're plants are always in excellent condition, and I'm excited for them to arrive in a few weeks. They're a few varieties I've never grown before, and I'm looking forward to trying a white eggplant.

Around lunchtime, my hubby, son, and I drove over to Camp's Plants in Mtn Home and picked up a second load of Super Dirt to top off all the lasagna garden beds. We made it home just in time to unload the dirt before the sky opened up and dumped on us. It felt nice digging in the warm dirt when it was just a sprinkle, but once the thunder started rolling, I felt a bit safer under cover.

It was such a perfect rain. I love the smell of wet dirt and grass! It stopped right at dinnertime, so I could put the burgers on the grill and still stay dry. The break in the rain also gave me some time to take photos this evening. (I'll be sure to post them tomorrow when the battery is recharged. I went a bit crazy with the camera.)

I have a feeling I will sleep very well tonight, as should my son who's exhausted himself out in the yard running back and forth between his teepee, swingset, the garden and sandbox. I hope it's a sign of things to come...