Pickle de Gallo

A delicious and healthy alternative to regular salsa and a great and easy way to use up some of those garden vegetables that are just waiting to be eaten!

INGREDIENTS

1 large cucumber, finely chopped

1 c. dill pickles, finely chopped

1/2 c. red onion, finely chopped

1 red bell pepper, stem and seeds removed, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

1 jalapeño, finely chopped (remove seeds for less heat)

1/2 c. brine from jar of pickles

salt, to taste

DIRECTIONS

Combine all ingredients into a bowl and mix until combined. Cover and refrigerate for an hour until ready to eat. Enjoy with your favorite tortilla chips!

Garden Scrambled Omelette

One of my favorite things about gardening is finding ways to use the fresh vegetables in our cooking. Omelettes are so versatile because you can add whatever ingredients you like and the options are endless. It's also healthy and filling! 

INGREDIENTS

3 eggs

2 T. milk

Shredded Cheese

Cherry Tomatoes

Bell Pepper

Kale/Spinach

Jalapeno Pepper

Red Onion

Zucchini

Butter to sauté vegetables

Bacon, cooked and crumbled 

Salt & Pepper

DIRECTIONS

Crack eggs into a bowl, add milk and whisk until combined. Add salt and pepper to taste and set aside. 

Chop all vegetables to equal approximately 1/3 cup. In a fry pan on medium heat add a little butter and sauté veggies for 1-2 minutes. Pour eggs over veggies and sprinkle with bacon and cheese. Slowly stir until eggs are cooked to desired consistency. Plate and enjoy.

What is your favorite combination of ingredients for an Omelette?

Flower Planters

This year I have been focusing a lot of my time to learning everything I can about flower planters. Working part time at a green house helped me to ask a lot of questions and learn some basic skills about planting flowers, growing environments, fertilizing, watering and deadheading. For 16 years I've bought flowers at the green houses and arranged pots in a way that I thought would look best but it was so much fun to learn about simple growing principles that hadn't crossed my mind.

A few notes:

Begonia's love shade. The flowers are edible! I think they have citrusy taste and would be a good edition to salads. Begonia's have a male and female flower and of course the male flower is larger and more full than the females. If you want larger male flowers simply pluck the females off once they have bloomed. 

Begonia leaves do not like water....it can aid in dry ugly burn marks on the leaves. It is best to water underneath the leaves close to the roots. 

My youngest loved coming over to visit us at the greenhouses and even got to plant her own planter. She had the best time walking around deciding which flowers she wanted in her pot and arranged them beautifully!

Can you spot the hummingbird? They love planters, especially these beautiful fuchsia flowers. If you want to attract hummingbirds and bees, add more variety of flowers to your yard! They are so much fun to watch. Fuchsia do better in part sun environments so mine have struggled a bit in this hot summer weather but I couldn't resist trying because they are so beautiful.

Normally the garden center I work for doesn't provide a service of planting herb containers but a lady talked us into it and I had a lot of fun planting and watching these herbs grow. It probably would've been best to plant 2 separate containers because some herbs grow better together than others but she wanted a little of everything so here we go! 

A shade planter...I love the colors!

A picture of the planters right after I moved them out of the greenhouses. They had been growing for about a month. It's important to water full sun planters every day and fertilize once a week. You can tell the difference below how much the flowers have grown over the pots. I love how they drape onto the ground. 

Sweet potato vines are the bright green leaves. They thrive in sun and definitely don't like cold weather. We had a cool spring and had to protect them a few times so they wouldn't die. Bugs also love sweet potato vines and will eat holes thru your beautiful plants so its best to spray a bug preventative every couple of weeks or more if they are downright pesky.

Lastly, when deciding what to plant remember 3 things.....thriller, filler, spiller. A thriller is something that will grow tall in the middle such as a spike, Canna Lily or Ornamental Grass. Second, you want to add fillers around the thriller such as Begonia's or Geraniums. And lastly, the best things to grow around your edges are spillers such as Sweet Potato Vine, Bocapa, Lobelia's, Verbena's or anything else that likes to drape beautifully over your pots. 

 

Green Beans

 

One of the first decisions you need to make when deciding to grow green beans is if you want to grow Bush Beans or Pole Beans. Bush Beans are just that....a bush. They do not need some sort of trellis to grow up and they stay low to the ground. Pole beans are a vine and they love creeping and crawling up something.  My husband added this trellis to the garden when building our garden boxes and it is one of my favorite things. I love seeing what vegetables love attaching themselves to it and to see how far they decide to grow up. It is a 6 1/2 ft. trellis and usually the green beans can get almost 3/4 the way around. Watching the beans grow and hang is a really fun sight. 

One thing we have learned with a trellis is that as the vegetables grow it creates a canopy of shade which can be a good and a bad thing. It takes some planning ahead in the spring to decide what vegetables will survive the late summer and if the green beans or other pole climbing plants will shield lower growing plants from the extra needed sun.

Two other words that are thrown around a lot are determinate and indeterminate. Determinate usually means that the crop you plant is going to be harvested all at once while indeterminate will keep producing over its entire growing season, continually adding new flowers that turn into beans. Bush Beans tend to be a determinate plant with flowers and beans developing at the end of the branches while Pole Beans are classified as indeterminate because the vines will continuously keep growing while adding additional flowers and green beans over a longer period of time. 

Bottom line is they are both great! The decision usually rests on what you have garden space for and personal preference. I know people who only prefer the flavor of canning Bush Beans. I love using trellis plants to use my space more effectively. This year I planted Bush and Pole Beans in different spaces and they both have been producing continuously. Go figure! One of my favorite things about gardening is the trial and error and all the surprises a long the way.

When we can't keep up with eating fresh produce I usually do 3 things: share with a friend, freeze or can. Freezing Green Beans is the fastest way to preserve your garden produce if you have the space. Simply break off the ends, blanch in boiling water for 3 minutes, cool for several minutes in cold ice water to preserve freshness and color, drain and then package in your favorite freezer bags to store in the freezer (6 mo to a year). I love using a food saver machine because the bags and sucking out the extra Oxygen help protect the food long term and from freezer damage. 

What is your favorite way to use Green Beans? 

Fall Gardening

Usually when late summer hits I start to experience a bit of burnout with gardening. It takes a lot of work to keep those plants beautiful and thriving. The thought of planting a fall crop seems exhausting but I had the space and time this year and decided to give it a try. Two of the most important things to think about if you are considering planting a fall crop is to know the first expected frost date for your zoned area and to know which plants have the shortest and fastest growing season so that your vegetables will have time to mature before cold weather sets in. One of the easiest ways to do this is to check your packets for an approximate expected harvest date. Radishes are one of the quickest growing vegetables and can mature in as little as 23 days. You will want to find other vegetables that can mature around 45-60 days. All vegetables have different varieties that will mature in shorter or longer amounts of times so don't expect all cucumber seeds to mature at the same rate. Some have significantly longer growing seasons. These are some of the vegetables I decided to take a stab at growing this fall. Since we can't predict the weather, it's not always a guarantee that we will make it to a harvest date for every vegetable but practicing is half the battle! All of these vegetables listed their harvest dates in less than 60 days. Our weather currently has been hot but we've had a lot of cloud cover which I think has helped significantly with keeping the soil wet enough to germinate seeds. I planted a week and a half ago and everything is popping up nicely. Fingers crossed that we have a mild fall and everything will keep producing!

Some of my red onions decided they were done growing so we pulled and laid them out on a drying surface in the garage to cure. This allowed for some extra space to grow radishes, carrots, green onions and beets.

Also have lettuce, swish chard and spinach growing where our spring crops were done producing and we cleaned out. I think the tomato and tomatillo plants will provide the extra shade needed for these cooler weather crops if we still have some lingering hot days of summer.

Squash and cauliflower plants are thriving in the warm soil.  Keep growing!

Do you plant a fall crop? What have you been successful at growing before cold weather hits?

Gardening Week 1

Have you started your indoor garden seeds yet for Spring? Now is the time! We are a little late in getting some things off to an earlier start but that's ok! It's all about trying. Some things we succeed at and other times it ends up being a fail. That's why it's super important to try again and again and if all else fails, then run to the local garden center for a plant! Just like artichokes. 

We should've started from seed around January 5th. Last year was our first try at growing artichokes. I found some beautiful plants at a local garden center and decided to give it a try.  Some things I learned.....they take up a lot of space! Artichokes have large beautiful green pokey leaves that require quite a bit of room to spread out and grow. Also, be patient. You get to look at those large beautiful green pokey leaves for quite a long time before an Artichoke will begin to emerge. Lastly, we got several artichokes off from each plant. I think we would've had more if our growing season was longer. Hopefully we will have success again this year!

It's important to find out what zone you live in so you can plant at the appropriate times and actually get a crop. I live in an area of USDA Hardiness Zones 6b and 7a so these are the things we planted from seed this week:

Bell Peppers
Jalapeños
Poblano Peppers
Celery
Oregano
Rosemary
Thyme
Sage
Basil
Broccoli
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Eggplants
Kale
Tomatoes
Leeks
Brussel Sprouts
Mint
Kohlrabi
Lettuce
Swiss Chard
Tomatillos
Chives

Radish seeds can currently be planted in your garden outside. Also this week we will be trying to get Peas, Spinach, Carrots, Dill, and Pak Choi seeds in the ground.  I will keep you updated with our progress. What are your favorite things to grow? 

Lilacs

One of my favorite times of the year is Spring when all the blossoms begin to emerge from their sleep. I LOVE lilacs! They are so full and fragrant and my favorite color has always been purple so I just think they are beautiful. My sweet neighbor across the fence grows the most beautiful lilac bushes and they always stretch higher than the fence spilling over into my backyard. We always get to enjoy the beautiful color and fragrance for a month or so. The kids love to help me cut and arrange bouquets to bring into the house. Enjoying a little bit of outdoors inside is so refreshing and just makes us all happy! 

The kids this year had fun helping to arrange some flowers from the yard to take to their teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week. 

Lilacs come in an assortment of colors: pink, purple and white. Lilac bouquets usually don't last more that a couple days. One tip is to cut with the flowers when they are no more than a 1/2 inch open. Make sure the stems stay submerged in water and they will last longer if kept out of direct sunlight. 

New Garden Boxes

*UPDATE* We got the rock laid around the garden boxes and it looks great! The plants love their new home and I'm so excited that the project is completed!

 

I'm surprised Jason hasn't already killed me for the unnecessary manual labor I've put him through. This is the third garden spot we've constructed but it's the best one yet. Our first year gardening was in this same spot w/o the garden boxes. We (I) couldn't control the weeds and it was just too big for our little family. So we covered up the whole area with sod and built a smaller garden box which was great but it was quickly being taken over by strawberries which my kids love to pick and eat in the summer. So after much deliberation on how to solve the problems of weed control plus our separate interests of what we like to grow, Jason came up with these garden boxes and I'm so excited to see how the rest of it develops. We're planning to add rock around the garden boxes and maybe a drip system later. Last night the kids helped me plant onions, garlic, carrots and beets. Today we'll see what else we can get in it. Even though the kids don't like some of the vegetables to eat, they love planting and watching them grow. I was getting a kick out of Brandon singing to the plants last night as he was watering.

*UPDATE We got everything planted and are now working on leveling the ground for rock.