Garden Veggies and an Easy Recipe

Here's what we've harvested so far from our garden.........

* 4 pickings of salad greens-8.1 ounces
*  2.5 cups of basil-2 ounces
* 1 Japanese eggplant-2.4 ounces
* 1 zucchini-24.9 ounces
* 2 yellow squash-17.4 ounces

So what to do with your basil other than use it fresh or dry it?  I made tomato sauce and used some basil in it this week.
And then I made pesto for the first time!

Super easy to do.
You need basil leaves(remove the stems), EVOO, garlic, parmesan cheese and nuts(pine nuts or walnuts work best)and a food processor or blender.

Put basil, garlic and nuts in processor, whiz up a few seconds then with the power still on slowly add the olive oil until smooth.
Add the cheese afterwards and just pulse the machine to blend it in.
And that's it!

This will keep for 1 week in the fridge or throw it into the freezer.  I bought smallish containers at Dollar Tree for putting this into the freezer.  This makes enough for one large meal of pesto for 4-5 people.
I don't like pesto so I had to have Hubs taste test it for me.  It's a frozen asset now and can be warmed up some night I don't have a plan and someone wants pesto and pasta.

Garden Output so far......54.8 ounces or 3 lbs. 42.5 ounces
Not much but once the tomatoes kick in the total weight will escalate. ;-)

What's growing in your garden?
How is it doing?

Sluggy

Recently Garden Activity

Here are a few photos from my garden taken in the last week.

One of the first normal sized tomatoes we have.  It's about to turn red and I'll get Hubs to harvest it tonight when he gets home from work.
We have lost at least 4 other tomatoes to a deer who has discovered our garden.......

More telltale evidence of the deer.  Our garden is not deep so he can lean in from the short fence and reach the bean vines on the deck railing and chomp away at them....

The tomato plants are dying back now and the Summer squash plants are getting powdery mold and also dying off but the morning glory vines are still going great guns.

The collard plants are doing better now that other plants are dying back and giving them more sunlight.  The Japanese beetles seem to have fled as well so the new collard leaves aren't being eaten, meaning there may actually be something to harvest of them come the first frost.  ;-)

The front flower bed has been growing like gangbusters!
You can see in this shot that we have tomato plants in that bed.  We didn't plant tomatoes in there this year.....they are all volunteers!  And they actually have tomatoes on the plants now so if the bunnies and the deer don't find them, we may get some to turn red and harvest.

We planted Coleus as well as that are those spikey flowers(can't remember what they are called)in this photo in this bed this past Spring.
We planted those same spikey flowers last year in here as well.
Well we could have saved some money not replanting these spikey flowers this year since they seemed to have reseeded themselves and we have TONS of these spikey flowers all over this bed!
It's very vibrant and colorful out front this year.

The Coleus as well have gotten HUGE in the bed this year.  Some of the leaves on these plants are as big as my head!  That's what lots of sunshine will do for ya......
The Coleus has finally gone to seed out here and I may try to collect seeds this Fall and start my own plants next Winter.

Just a close-up of some plantings.

The first normal sized tomato harvested on Friday...........

My mater and bean face....what I picked 24 Aug. but hadn't shown yet.....lolz

Another big squash I picked last Wednesday.....Hubs picked another smaller squash on Sunday but he didn't take a photo of it for me.....

More green beans last week...........

And yet another handful of beans later in the week.....

The harvest total is a bit off since Hubs hasn't been weighing the produce he picks and I don't have the paper I write the weights on up here with me.  My guess is we are up to 12 lbs.?

I haven't been outside in 3 days due to the foot issue and I really want to get out there and check things out.
Maybe tomorrow.

Sluggy

 

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

Picking Time #3.....Just Go Away!

Ok, so I have discovered the secret to get your garden to produce.
Would you like to know what it is?
Come a little closer and I'll whisper it into your ear......





To get your garden to hand over the veggies just......

GO ON VACATION!

That's what we did.
And here is what we came home to......

  And then 2 days later I picked these....

Plus the rest of the Collard Greens look like they need picking too, but I'll hold off until #1 son comes home in 1 week so he can have a mess 'o greens to eat.  ;-)

I don't care for frozen squash so we've be eating it fresh.  I'm going to make stuffed squash(like stuffed bell peppers)out of it most probably. 
The cauliflower got blanched and frozen for winter eating....those 4 heads filled 5 quart sized bags.  I'll be planting spinach this week where the cauliflower was located.  There are still 2 heads to harvest that are a bit small yet.
The tomatoes that haven't been made into BLTs got thrown into the freezer until I have enough to can them.
We've eaten all the bread & butter pickles from the 1st gallon I made so I'll probably make another jar full with this lot of cukes, plus leaving a couple fresh for salads.

This harvest--
Tomatoes....3lb. 10.12 oz.
Squash.....2lb. 2.8 oz.
Cucumbers....3lb. 2.6 oz.
Cauliflower....4lb. 12 oz.
TOTAL....13lb. 11.52oz.

Garden Harvest Weight Total to date....29 lb. 0.92 oz.

What's new in your garden?


Sluggy