Garden update

A sudden, sharp uptick in activity with my soap business has temporarily sidetracked me from blogging in recent weeks ... but life still goes on! When I haven't been busily packing orders and updating spreadsheets (or warming a chair at my day job), I've been tending the garden.

This year's garden promises great things to come. We managed to put together a third garden box to accommodate the broccoli and lettuce plants. I've already picked some tender broccoli "crowns," having learned from last year's crop that the best thing you can do with broccoli is pick it as soon as it begins to look like broccoli. Delicious!

As usual, we have far too many tomato plants, but can it really be too many when you have so many different varieties? Early Girls, Better Boys and standard beefsteaks, not to mention the three or four heirloom varieties I brought home from the plant sale at the co-op a month or so ago. It's a matter of hurry-up-and-wait, as I want a nice thick drippy homegrown tomato sandwich now.

The strawberries are doing well, judging by the nibble marks from some hungry predator (note to self: Must make the time to set up the chicken wire, maybe that'll keep the neighborhood bunnies away). I managed to actually pick and eat a ripe one that survived ... and it was good. We have over a dozen individual plants at one end of the long bed beside the house.

The bell peppers are looking good as well. I have one plant that's actually producing a pepper! Very exciting stuff. Last year's pepper plant fell victim to a tomato plant that grew so large that eventually I was unable to even enter the garden. Let's just say things are laid out a little differently this year.

This year, I have an entire garden bed devoted to herbs! In addition to sweet basil and Greek oregano, I have rosemary, cilantro, Thai basil, mints (peppermint, pineapple mint and chocolate mint), wormwood, and lemon balm. Plus I threw in a random heirloom pea plant and an eggplant just because it looked like there was enough room.

Off to one side, I planted "double yield cucumber." Hmmm ... double yield: is that a threat or a promise? I expect it will eventually rear up on rudimentary hind legs and emit a feral roar as it overtakes the garden.

So far everything is off to a wonderful start. The mints are definitely feeling at home and in fact, all the herbs are quite large and bushy already. Time to get cooking! There are the beginnings of actual tomatoes on the Early Girls and the cherry tomato plants are in full bloom. As I mentioned earlier, the peppers and broccoli are doing nicely.

It's a bit late right now but I want to post some pictures of the garden. Coming soon!

pictures of my garden on Halloween

A couple of people have asked to see pictures of my garden, so this morning I brought out the camera before I went off to work and snapped a few quick shots. I can't say it's all that impressive, but here goes!


Here's the broccoli I wrote about. I've about given up on it.


Here's my rosemary bush. It grew nicely this year ... unlike the basil, which really wasn't all that photogenic this morning. To the right are (some weeds and) the strawberry plants that produced exactly one misshapen, bitter berry before abandoning the concept altogether and moving on to other pursuits, such as sending tendrils out on a reconnaissance mission to the failed experiment known as my cucumber plants. Maybe next year will be better. Or maybe I'm supposed to be doing soil amendments or something, I don't know.


Loads and loads of green tomatoes that undoubtedly will never actually turn orange, let alone red. I'm not sure I'm very excited about eating fried tomatoes - I've heard about it but never tried it, but I tend to avoid fried foods on general principle (and the recommendation of my gall bladder). Maybe there's another way of preparing green tomatoes ... I just need to do some research. If I find anything I'll post about it - or if anyone has any ideas please share them!


The Greek oregano did very well this year! Nice, big leaves and such a marvelous fragrance. I surprised myself this year with how much fresh oregano my recipes wanted: I found myself plucking the tender, soft leaves several times over the summer, including the stuffed eggplant dish I brought to the first Eat Local potluck supper.



The "macro" feature on my camera focused on the green leafy background, but you can still make out the unmistakable shapes of little proto-peppers. I still can't believe that those plants are still trying to make peppers months after the season allegedly ended!

I looked in the garden this afternoon and found one viable red tomato and dozens of big fat green ones. Most of the tomato plants have begun dying back, including the ones that overshadowed the bell pepper plants - which are now producing little peppers as if it were springtime. I can't blame them for being confused - today's weather was glorious, mid-70s and totally cloudless. Most of the month has been similar. Gotta hand it to the pepper plants: they managed to produce one or two nice big peppers before the monster tomatoes took over. Now they're trying again! That's the spirit!

I'm starting to think about autumn and what to do with my garden. I'm wondering about what to do with the herbs. Specifically, what do I do with the Greek oregano and the nice, tall rosemary bush? it would be great if I could transplant them into pots in my house and enjoy them all winter long.

One thing I very much want to do this fall is roast some vegetables, drizzling them with olive oil and sprinkling with chopped fresh rosemary before going in the oven. My sister does this and the results are incredible! I've never done it, and I have the rosemary, so I want to give it a go. Anyone ever roast veggies this way? How'd it go for you?