Garden Update

One of the 2 types of green beans we planted have finally yielded a small crop.
These are GoldRush variety beans....

No, they are not ailing, they are suppose to be yellow-green in color. lol  I'll be cooking these tonight.

And in the bed out front we picked these over the weekend....

4 good sized squash. 
I grilled 1 last night for dinner(cut into slabs for Hubs and I)but have 3 left.   Tomorrow we'll have a fish fry and I'll fry up some slices of squash too.  It's like fried zucchini but yellow.

And speaking of zucchini(how can you avoid speaking of zucchini in the Summer?!)......here is what I made last week for dinner one night.....

We call it Lemon Chicken but the proper name is "Lena's Chicken".  This recipe comes to me by way of an old friend of my mother's.  The origins past there are unknown.

It's Chicken thighs dredged in flour and lemon pepper mixture(either the no salt variety or a mix of salt/no salt ones), then pan fried until the skin is browned, but not cooked all the way through.
The veggie is a mix of onions and zuke slices with a can of tomatoes(use crushed or whole) in the pan you browned the chicken in(after you pour the leftover oil out).  Put the chicken back in on top of the veggies and put a lid on the pan.  This simmers covered for 45 min. while you fix your rice separately.

Then eat it.  It is a mighty tasty way to get rid of all that zucchini if you are tired of fried zuke and zuke bread.

I need to thin out my Collard Greens soon.  I'll probably do that this weekend and use the thinnings to make a small batch of greens.  The young leaves will be more tender but they won't be as sweet as letting the first frost get to your collards before you pick them.

The tomatoes are quietly doing their growing thing.  The peppers and salad are not.  We are still waiting on the other variety of green beans, the Romano ones, to bloom.
It's been a very weird Summer in the garden.

Sluggy

This Year's Garden...1st Update

I know I haven't blogged much(if any!)about our garden this year.
I don't know....I guess I am just not much 'into' the garden this year.

Here's a shot of the side bed from April 30th when we were just getting to cleaning out the beds and prepping the soil....

Usually we have nothing to harvest until mid July at the earliest because of our climate/zone.
Well, the 2 weeks of unseasonably HOT weather in early June sped up the rate of germination and growth a LOT!
We've been picking radishes for weeks!

I've got them coming out of my ears at this point.lol

And here is a shot of the same side bed taken two weeks ago....

A few tomato plants, some squashy/cuke type plants(I don't even remember what kinds....see what I mean about I'm not into it this year!lol) and a few bean plants.

We are having a devil of a time getting the bean plants to grow.  We've planted different kinds(bush and vine type)in all the different bed locations with little success.  Hubs sewed some into the wooden barrels also and those were doing great!
Until a critter found them and had a munchfest. bleh

 Hubs thinks one of the resident bunnies is decimating the bean plants since we know that the bunnies have jumped INTO the wooden barrels in the past.  But if the bunnies are doing this, explain why just the tops of the bean plants are being eaten, like someone taking a weedwacker to the plants and leaving the lower/bottom foliage and plant intact?  I think it's a taller animal, like a deer, walking through the yard and eating the tops of the bean plants.
Either way, our bean plants are not going to produce any beans this year.  *sigh*

Doesn't this shot look very lush and promising?
It is.
But it's all WEEDS not veggies!lol

And we got our first blossom on the eggplant plants 2 weeks ago.  See the lavender flower on the left in the photo?  I don't know if it will produce a fruit however since I haven't see any bees around yet to pollinate stuff.  The tomato plants in the backyard bed have golf ball sized tomatoes as of this week so I know the bees are around.
I hope I don't have to resort to playing bee and go from bloom to bloom with a paintbrush on the eggplant and squash blossoms. ;-)

Here's something I do that you might find unusual.
Lettuces are an early Spring crop.  You are suppose to plant it early and it dies back by mid summer usually.
Since we can't plant an early crop of lettuces/greens while the weather is still coolish here due to our climate, I sew the lettuce seeds among the cuke and squash plant seeds at the same time I sew the cuke/squash seeds.
This way, by the time the weather gets too warm for the lettuces(the hot weather that makes your lettuce wilt, dry up and die), the squash leaves have grown large enough to shield the lettuce from full sun.  The lettuce continues to grow well into August.

Here's my squash type plants....

 But move the leaves back and look closer....

 See my salad greens!

That's my diversity garden bed. 8-)

How is your garden doing?

Sluggy