What are you eating from your garden in 2016

[pepperhead212]

I had those covered because of rabbits! I'm sure it helped with other things, but then, slugs can be a problem, so I always sprinkle some Sluggo on the row, before planting. I sprayed some BT on them, when uncovered, but I don't usually have much of a problem with cabbage worms.

I grow all of those again in the fall, usually in the row I grew my garlic and shallots in.

Steve,

With all of those brassicas that I have grown, there is only one that I have had flea beetles on - Napa cabbage. In fact, I have actually used that as a flea beetle magnet, planting a few away from everything else, and they get totally covered with them, which seems to keep them from my eggplant - the main thing I have to worry about, in regards to flea beetles.

[PaulF]

radishes and a few strawberries

[imafan26]

The herb garden has loads of the cabbage butterflies flitting about. They like the kale. At home I am lucky last year one buttefly found my broccoli, but this year so far none.

I tried lightweight row covers for insect control but even the lightweight ones held to much heat for my climate.

[rainbowgardener]

Last night was garden salad including broccoli (all from the garden!) and zucchini and spinach soup, with basil and four packed cups of spinach from the garden. No garden zucchini - I didn't even bother planting any on the assumption that vine borers will only be worse here than before. All the squash I have planted is winter squash varieties. The soup was very good, with white beans, onions, garlic, lemon juice -- light and summery. After the spinach is gone, I will do it again with kale.

[applestar]

I'm making an omelet with yesterday's harvest

Shiitake, loose leaf Chinese cabbage (Osaka Shirona), garlic chives, and chervil.

Chervil was minced and liberally scattered on top after plating.

[j3707]

I harvested a few turnips. Ate some raw, then raw with salt and that helped tone down the peppery finish. Then I made mashed turnips with, salt, pepper and butter. Pretty good!

Pepperhead, those greens look outstanding.

RG, I agree with you. I want to get on the mushroom bandwagon at some point. Applestar the shiitake looks awesome.

[imafan26]

I harvested some bok choy cabbage. and made an easy stir fry. Blanched the bok choy stems and leaves separately and drained it well. Stir fried minced garlic and thinly sliced pork in a wok. Crumbled a bouillion cube and added a couple of tablespoons of oyster sauce. Added the blanched cabbage and stir fried. Pushed everything to one side and added a well beaten egg to the wok, mixed well and it was done.

[rainbowgardener]

wow! sounds good imafan!

From my garden: New Potatoes!! I dug around and found four baby potatoes about 2" long! Yay! my potato plants are making potatoes.

PS later.... It was only a few bites a piece for the two of us, but OMG, so delicious!!! If you only eat from the grocery store, you wouldn't know potatoes actually have flavor!! It is interesting, because these started out as grocery store potatoes I planted. So the difference isn't the genetics. What is it then, the freshness? These went from the ground to our mouths in about two hours. If the potato plants are productive and the potatoes are this good when they are bigger, then I'm going to have to devote a LOT more of my yard to potatoes!

And I've been harvesting the sugar snap peas for a couple days now and it looks like there are LOTS more coming on..

I love it! Now the garden is giving actual food, not just leaves

[Lindsaylew82]

Stupice!

[rainbowgardener]

Tonight's dinner was sauteed mixed greens all from the garden, with garlic, white beans, green onion. The onion was from the garden and I threw in a big handful of the sugar snap peas! Don't you love spring!

[Meatburner]

Oh this time of year is sooooo wonderful. Pulled mixed leaf lettuce, radishes, green onions, spinach, and dwarf bok choi for a fresh salad. From pulling from the garden to fork ready was about 10 minutes. Life Is Good!

[PinkPetalPolygon]

I just picked my first green zucchini!

(Haha the label on the plant just said "Green Zucchini")

It was amazing. I can't believe how "different" it tastes from the ones from the farmer's market even!

There is really something to be said for eating something that was on the vine moments previously!

I was all eating some of the zucchini raw like it was a cucumber, it tasted absolutely sweet to me like a melon!

(Okay, not that sweet, but the way it held water was/is amazing. I've never had a zucchini so juicy!)

I tried to use the zucchini in a frittata for the first time I've ever used a zucchini in a frittata and adding the zucchini to the cooking meat/veg mixture made it SOUPY with water from the zucchini, oh my gosh.

Next time I will have to cook the zucchini in a different pan or steam it or bbq it err something. I drained off the excess juice all I could, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is still an overly juicy frittata.

I'll eat it no matter what, and lesson learned!

Mmmm I'm pretty sure I'm in store for a zucchini filled summer!!!

I let this zucchini go for 3 days after it set and it got so huge so fast! When I picked it I wasn't expecting it to be as HEAVY as it was!!!!!

To the frittata I added chives. sage leaves, and oregano & marjoram flowers from the garden. Mmmm!

I'm proud!

[btrowe1]

Asparagus and chive blossoms, very tasty the the 1st sprouts are and yummy, 4th year for the asparagus so went a lil crazy for 2 weeks buy left the lil small girls grow to fern am just about done for this year on the freshness, but boy oh boy its really different than the store variety..Chives are chives blossoms are tasty mixed with everything even asparagus and olive oil, heck olive oil makes everything taste better..

[imafan26]

green onions for my ramen noodles. Grape tomatoes. I have 2 chayote so I am making pork and chayote soup today.

[Lindsaylew82]

I just ate my very first tomato sammich! It. Was. Amazeballs.

[KitchenGardener]

Let's see...salads with romaine, radishes, and peas - and, if I'm feeling super indulgent, I pull a few baby beets and add them.

Broccoli side shoots and leaves, green onions and snow peas in stirfry.

Herbs: parsley, thyme, tarragon, rosemary, oregano, chives, mint and others. For some reason, this year, my cilantro fared poorly, hardly grew and then bolted right away so I'll have to plant more. The basil is hardly growing yet so every once in a while, I treat myself to a leaf or two but nothing to speak of.

Onions and carrots are taking forever

Unfortunately, last night my dogs chased something into the garden, knocking down the fence in the process and taking out onions, a few peas, a cuke plant and two of my pepper plants, one with a sweet pepper growing on it. Sigh. It could've been worse, and the pepper plant was really too little to be growing a pepper anyway.

[KitchenGardener]

I just ate my very first tomato sammich! It. Was. Amazeballs.

You are a bad influence, as now I want a tomato sammich made from your tomatoes...

[Lindsaylew82]

I just ate my very first tomato sammich! It. Was. Amazeballs.

You are a bad influence, as now I want a tomato sammich made from your tomatoes...

Come on! We are only a continent away!

[rainbowgardener]

Had a whole salad that was all from the garden with lots of different greens and broccoli side shoots.

AND I picked two cups full of the sugar snap peas. Very lightly steamed them for just a couple minutes. Drizzled them with some butter in which I had infused lemon thyme! So good!

[digitS']

Lettuce, radish, green onions, and the volunteer orach ..

. now joined by spinach, kale and bok choy from the garden.

I had both spinach and kale with my baked salmon (under rosemary ) for lunch.

Steve

[HoneyBerry]

I'm harvesting honeyberries today. A small harvest but they are so good.
Can't buy these in the store, so they are extra special. I didn't have to use any pesticides or herbicides, so they are 100% organically grown. They are naturally pest free and easy to grow. And the birds and bunnies haven't been stealing any. I don't know why I am so lucky.

[HoneyBerry]

Here is a picture of some of the berries still on the branches:

[applestar]

I've been thinking about getting honey berries since they started featuring them rather prominently in catalogs. The 2nd photo with the blue berries is what I'm used to seeing.

Why are the harvested berries so uh brown(?) looking?? That's when they are ripe?

[HoneyBerry]

It's just a bad picture. They look much better in real life. I think the bright yellow bowl did something to the camera color sensor. They are actually very blue, similar to blueberries. They are sooooooo good. I can't believe they are pest free. They are easy to grow.

[HoneyBerry]

Here's a better picture but they still look even better in real life.
The berries have a whitish-gray sheen to them, like how blueberries are.

[rainbowgardener]

Dinner last night was "crispy, cream braised potato and fennel," with a fennel bulb from the garden. It could have been also new potatoes from the garden, but I couldn't bring myself to sacrifice them. And of course a big garden salad with mixed greens, sugar snap peas, baby broccoli (side shoots). Oh yum! We eat so well this time of year....

[jnunez918]

Decent harvest today for my tiny backyard garden

[Lindsaylew82]

Birdlover, how long did it take your plant to start producing?

[HoneyBerry]

I didn't really keep track, but I think a couple of years and then each year the bushes have grown bigger, so now after about 5 years, I have some good size bushes producing lots of berries.
The berries have an amazing wild flavor.
You should plant 2 or more different honeyberry varieties. They need to cross pollinate. I have Blue Forest and Blue Moon.

[applestar]

I'm going to look into honey berries, too. Thanks for the info!

I'm harvesting and eating all kinds of greens, but my DD's are mostly interested in these. I'm picking about this much twice a day right now.


The elongated ones have been producing first. No idea which variety this is, though I originally thought it was Sweet Charley. Wild strawberries are trickling in, and big one is starting -- I think this is SeaScape. All the varieties are all poised for mass ripening, which will happen soon since we're going to get some hot days.

[HoneyBerry]

The picture of the honeyberries in the white bowl look better if you zoom in.
I am using just a cell phone camera, so the picture quality is not as good as what I get from my other camera.
I am thinking about propogating honeyberry plants, at least give it a try.
I guess birds love honeyberries, but they haven't noticed mine.

Apple, your strawberries look wonderful. I have some wild strawberry plants but they don't produce much. I'd rather have just one of those wild strawberries than a whole box of store bought strawberries.

[HoneyBerry]

Some of my honeyberries had twins. About 10 per bush.

[Lindsaylew82]

Wierd!

Are they wrinkled?

[HoneyBerry]

Not wrinkled, just unique.
They get wrinkled when they get old and dehydrated, the ones that weren't picked and die on the vine.

[MichaelC]

So far, naught but a handful of sugar snap peas and also the unexpected handful of cherries. But nectarines, beans and container carrots are soon ahead, hopefully cukes as well.

[Meatburner]

I posted this on another forum but thought to share here as well. This is about a daily event right now. The dwarf bok choy and spinach are getting close to bolting but the leaf lettuce mix and radishes are onions are holding in there. I love this stuff!

[rainbowgardener]

Last night we had one last spinach omelet and I pulled all the spinach. It also had a green onion from the garden. Tonight we are grilling but with the grilled meats (and non-meats! ) we are having purslane potato salad (I posted the recipe for it) with purslane AND new potatoes from my garden! And of course a green salad. Lettuce, chard, kale, cabbage are still going strong. I have tons of sugar snap peas (and some of the regular peas could be picked) and baby broccoli (side shoots)/

[MichaelC]

Hi Rainbow -

Rather than start a thread, I've got a follow up question for you regarding the sugar snap peas. This is my second year growing them, and an issue I had last year has come up again. Many of the peas grow extremely thin, like snow peas, and never fatten up. Any idea what the problem is?

[applestar]

Not rainbow, but were these saved seeds or seeds from a vendor? Could they have been mixed up?

When I harvest, I toss the edible podded peas together in a same container, and separately harvest the shelling peas. If there are overgrown/overmature peas, it's theoretically possible to mix them (snow peas and snap peas) when saving them as seeds for planting next season. Personally, I don't care since pods develop very differently and are easy to tell apart when growing. Maybe show us some pictures.

[applestar]

Not harvesting them yet, but I thought these were fun pictures because the menu jumps out at you --



LEFT: Broccoli and Potatoes (under the row cover) side dishes
TOP-RT: sautéed Broccoli and Snap Peas
BOTTOM-RT: creamed new Potatoes and Peas