Vegetable Gardening

[smilingcat]

was at a local "organic" grocery store of sort. Walked by a refridgerated section and on the shelves were all these sprouts.

a light bulb goes off in my head !!!

Hey, those sprouts... They've sprouted duh!!! and they were cheaper than seed packets and to boot, they've all sprouted duh!! ...

So bought a pkg of sugar snap peas for less than a buck. scattered them peas all over one cleared area and scattered some compost over the top and some uncomposted dead stalks and leaves from my veggie plants for cover.

voila.. Most of them have already shot through the compost cover and I can see all the green shoots poking their head through the ground cover. very very cool!!! If I'm lucky, I'll have a whole lot of sugar snap peas.

Sugar snap pea I think is a nitrogen fixer so it should help the soil too.

oh gotta can more tomatoes... make jalapeno pepper jellies... dry some serrano chilli and grind tem up substitute for cayenne pepper...

soetimes life is good.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

It will be frosts in 4 weeks here.

But I've kept up with sprouting alfalfa in jars in my kitchen...every 5 days or so I start another jar going, and I have a continuous supply of nice fresh sprouts for salads and sandwiches... Each large jar only needs two tablespoons of seed, costing me maybe 25 cents?
This will be great this winter when the snow is flying... jars full of bright green, sparkling on the windowsill....

[OakLeaf]

Picked the rest of the sweet corn yesterday. I really didn't intend to put any of it by, but wound up planting more than we could eat, so I froze 3-1/2 pints.

I'll do another batch of tomato sauce some time this week. My plants hung in there, barely, from the bacterial speck, but they didn't produce nearly as much as they would've if I'd kept them healthy, and the main crop's just about done. I've still got volunteer tomatoes coming on though.

I'm sure glad that chest freezer fit in the back of my Prius.

[OakLeaf]

Nine six-ounce portions of pesto, plus what we ate tonight. I burned out my basil receptors picking, washing and prepping the leaves, and couldn't even taste what I ate tonight. Oh well.

Even in Florida, the reminder of lush summer will be so welcome come February. There's just nothing like pesto to bring summer into your home!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Here's my blog update on how my garden is coming along:
http://strumelia.blogspot.com/2009/0...f-lettuce.html

[tulip]

veggie-wise, I only got two cherry tomatoes from my garden this weekend, but there's alot of basil still to be picked and a two green tomatoes on the big vine.

But the big news is that I harvested 8 wheelbarrowsful (yes, 8!) of finished, sifted compost from my compost pile today! It was alot of work, but a good workout and well worth the effort.

I put two wheelbarrowsful (from now on referred to as WBF because typing that out is a pain) in my winter collards raised bed, two WBF as mulch in two new flowerbeds on either side of the door to my cottage (I have a small cottage in my backyard that will be my office this time next year, but now it's just used as storage). I planted hollyhocks, shasta daisies, and coreopsis that I have been growing from seed all summer. I have alot more of them too! And the last 4 WBF are in the "finished compost" section of my three-part compost system that I made of shipping pallets. I'll be able to use that as needed.

I have four huge oak trees, so most of that compost comes from last years leaves. Just in time for this year's leaves, which will begin to fall in a few weeks. This year I'm renting a leaf shredder!

[Trek420]

Ok all you farmers. It's hardly a vegetable garden but .... I've found that chard, kale, leafy greens will survive and thrive in planters in my dark, sunless patio.

[GLC1968]

We have been totally neglecting our garden for the past 3 weeks. We've been watering...but that's about it. So yesterday we had a couple of extra hands, so we had a good harvest... This was what we ended up with (leaving a ton of blackberries & grapes behind!):





The massive zucchini's you see are actually going to be goat treats. The acorn squash was our bonus compost plant - so we have no idea if it'll taste ok but we plan to try it tonight!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Great harvest pix, GLC!

I just got home from a firend's house where I picked a big batch of her pickling cucumbers and left her a big bag of fresh lettuce and scallions in exchange.
Going to make my first bread and butter pickles this week!

Deeaimond- tomato looks good- loosen those ties around the stalk so the stem can keep growing without getting choked. Looks like it could benifit from a bit more sun if you have it. Worm castings are good for it!

[jillm]

I found this recipe for Bloody Mary mix and thought some of you might have surplus tomatoes. I added extra tabasco and horseradish to give it some bite. Haven't had any as a bloody mary, but as just veggie juice it's really tasty!

http://www.recipezaar.com/Aunt-Iones...Canning-187969

Enjoy!

[spokewench]

Great harvest GLC - If I did not water for 3 weeks; no way would we have anything of any value! that is the life when you live at 7,000 feet in Arizona!

I'm lucky if things do okay if I don't water for 3 days!

[tulip]

Wow, GLC! Just Wow!

[GLC1968]

Spoke - water was the one thing we did do! We can't go without watering here in the summer or everything would die in about 3 days, too. Winter it rains, summer...not so much!