Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

But no everyone can grow it!

I have been working hard on our garden and it is really starting to pay off!

We have been collecting all the green beans that we have picked in a quart-size Ziploc bag in the freezer, waiting for the day when we would have enough to make a meal for all five of us and that day has finally come! And we have decided to make Thai string bean chicken! It is a favorite dish of ours and one of our quick, go-to meals when we are tired, busy or don’t have much time for whatever reason, to cook.

Our bush bans are coming in, they are fuzzy, teeny tiny and rather flat!

Our corn continues to grow steadily upwards, although I feel that it is reaching it’s maximum height quickly, we are getting larger tassels on top of each stalk and new  ears of corn seem to be dotting each stalk on a daily basis – I’m thinking some corn soup??? We are waiting with baited breath for these little gems!

The crook neck squash is growing and growing, with plenty of blossoms and little squash nubs appearing, we are gathering recipes to try out with our *hopefully* abundance of squash! Anyone interested in a free  squash when the time comes?

This must be said.

My favorite veggie in the whole, wide world is a cucumber. But not just any cucumber, a Japanese cucumber. It is very different from the British cucumber and any of the cucumbers one can get in the States – it just seems more crisp, flavorful and just darn delicious. In fact, I would rather pay the extra dollar for a British cucumber than to eat or buy an American cucumber, they are just so big, watery and tasteless! So imagine my happiness when we noticed that our cucumber plant was flowering and mixed in with the flowers and leaves, there were actual cucumber nubs growing in there???

Each day we have carefully checked our garden for more cucumbers and we finally found three worthy of picking! When you grow your own cucumbers, you really dont want to grow them too long. Basically any longer than 4-6 inches and you will start to get those watery cucumbers that I detest in American markets. The smallest one made a small sacrifice and we sliced it up and shared it among the four of us, each revelling in the lovely taste of the fresh, crisp cucumber. None of us can wait for the next batch to be ready for picking. My husband is quietly waiting for an abundance of cucumbers to hit our garden and “force” us into making dill pickles…

We also have an arm of the raised beds where we had been growing our bright lights radishes and they have recently been thoroughly picked and the area re-worked, ready for winter. But in a last minute run to the garden center to get a package of string bean seeds to do our experiment of growing them inside over the winter, we picked up another package of radish seeds and regular beets (we have golden beets growing still) and a watering can for Mei to use and help out in the garden.

Watering can and beach toys in tow, we got busy planting a new set of radishes and beets in our garden. Mei thoroughly enjoyed laying down the seeds with me and watering the bed afterwards to make sure they had a really lovely bed to start growing their little sprouts in. We can’t wait to start seeing the little green shoots come up! We even took more care to sow our seeds thinly, hopefully yielding in much larger radishes, in six weeks we will really know what we have!

The dragon’s heart carrots got thinned out a bit more and we have a handful of lovely carrots to nibble on during the day – which is usually the fate of our garden veggies. We just keep them in a bag in the fridge and nibble on them during our trips in and out of the fridge during the day, Mei gets a side of garden veggies in her dinners and we munch on them while cooking. If they will work with the meals we are making, we include them in those dishes as well.

Patella also supervises our gardening time after breakfast and she was interested in tomatillos, probably because a little finch was investigating them too! They are beginning ti bear fruit and we have a few recipes in mind for them – including enchiladas suizas!