Vegetable Gardening

[spokewench]

Here is a whole sink full of rainbow chard that I harvested this morning with a couple of zucchinis.

Oh, boy can't wait for that Italian style soup tonight!

[spokewench]

And, here is the result. One bag of stems, two great huge stuffed bags of chard leaves.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Wow, a whole sink full!
So now tell us what you are going to do with the bags of leaves and stems...

The sun is finally out, I went for a nice 25 mile bike ride already...
Now Im going out to do some garden tending right now!

[spokewench]

Well, for starters, I will make a soup. Saute onions, carrots, some of the stalks, garlic; add a little bacon and cook a bit; add stock, cannellini beans, lots of chard leaves, a can of diced tomatoes or fresh if I have them, a small rind from my parmesan cheese, some small pasta at the end yummy soup!

[OakLeaf]

Beautiful chard!

Wow, you have cannellini already? Or are you talking about dried?

Rabbits, or somebody, have been into mine - I took the opportunity to look inside a chewed-up pod, and the bean kernels are still really tiny, smaller than the ones in a lot of my green beans even (planted at the same time).

But I pulled a carrot yesterday just to thin the row a little, and it came out 6" long! I wasn't expecting that. Yummy.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Spoke- that sounds like good soup. I especially like the parmesan part.
I like to quickly stir fry my swiss chard, like I also do with my bok choy I am getting now too from the garden.
Everything in the new garden is of course still only 2-3 inches tall, and hopefully I will start getting the first lettuces, spinach, & radishes to eat from it in a few more weeks.
Meanwhile, the small old garden is putting out some nice things to eat.
At the end of autumn when the plants there have become exhausted, I might hoe it all up, fertilize it again, and plant some lettuce and spinach there for late autumn/early winter growing, since with the existing little mesh fence I could easily throw some clear plastic up and create a mini greenhouse of sorts as an experiment. In the Spring that whole little garden will be dug up and planted over to raspberries- it's a great spot for it!

[Selkie]

GLC - Would you mind sharing your zucchini bread and zucchini cookie recipes, please? I saw those pictures of your crop! WOW. By the way, I still love that pumpkin bread of yours (you posted the recipe last fall, I believe).

No zucchini in our small garden but our tomato plants are going gangbusters. I planted heirloom varieties, which I got a a "hoity toity" mail order place. Worth the money. One plant is producing purple ones, that are just now ripening. On my way in the house after work, I stop by, grab some ripe tomatoes and have a treat before I head off to the pool for a swim.

Our pepper plants got big but no peppers. Odd. Maybe due to lack of pollination?