Sunday, June 27, 2010

Harvest Updates & Home Grown Meals

Sat, June 27:
Daikon Radish, Cucumbers, Pineapple Basil, Garlic, Strawberries,
Grapes, one Green Bean, one Raspberry and Shiso leaves.


Fried rice with HG carrots, baby pumpkin and garlic. Other veggies include Farmer's Market onion and celery, organic turkey bacon and organic Jasmine rice.
Japanese "Shiozuke" (soaked in salt) pickles fermenting with HG Carrots, HG Cucumbers, HG Daikon HG Radish, and HG Garlic

Friday, June 25, 2010

Harvests and home grown meals

Thursday, June 24: New Zealand Spinach, Lots of Cucumbers, Perilla(shiso) leaves,
Strawberries and Cherry Tomatoes


Friday, June 25: Bok Choi, more Cucumbers(!), Strawberries,
Cherry Toms, and some Blue Basil for drying


Home made Gluten Free Flour Tortillas, Guacamole with HG Tomatoes and Cilantro. Neighbor's Lemon and Farmer's Market Avocados and Onion

With all the Cucumbers coming in, I just had to do something, SOooo Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled CUKES!

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

This Morning's Harvest

Lotsa Cucumbers are coming in along with Zucchini, Strawberries are still trickling in, enough for about 1/2 basket a day! A few Cherry Tomatoes are starting to ripen. Some green beans and a small bit of seedless grapes too!

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Harvests and Homegrown Meal

Bok Choi greens, Zucchini, Cucumbers (Japanese and Double Yeild), Strawberries, Peas, Radishes, Pumpkin blossoms, and our first Fig of the season!
All the veggies in this dish are from the garden! Carrots, Bok Choi, Yu Choi, and Garlic.
Chicken and Brown Rice( hiding under the stir fry) are organic.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Morning Harvest and healthy snacks

New Zealand Spinach, Squash blossoms, cucmbers, strawberries, baby pumpkin that didn't fertilize, and our very first blackberry of the season!
Snacks for work... oh I didn't tell you, I started working full-time away from home. I'm a Color Stylist for FOX Studio's "The Cleveland Show".  I like it there, the only things I don't like about it is the time spent away from my family and the garden.  Why did I start, you say? I want to save up some money so that I can purchase the solar panels, and eventually invest in some land. We were living within our means with one income and some freelance work but, it didn't allow for us to save enough to make the big purchases.  Our son's severe allergies to certain foods and chemical sensitivities means he will need to grow his own food to guarantee organic. Someday, he might need all the land to grow everything he needs, and I want to provide that for him.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Garden Updates

The summer garden is turning into an edible jungle! You can see how tall the sunchokes have gotten! My mom is 5' tall so you can estimate that the sunchokes are about 9'.
In the foreground (left) are the Kabocha leaves.
In the foreground, Roma Tomatoes, then in the middle, you can't tell, but the peppers are there. The last bed is the Corn, Cucumbers, Zucchinis, Pole Beans and Kabocha Pumpkins
The herb garden in the "pond". In the back are Cherry Tomatoes on "steroids" (worm poop).
They are quickly reaching 5' tall!
Here's another view from the same angle as the pic with my Mom, only wider.
Beds sandwiched between Mandarin tree on the left, Fig on the right

Harvest Updates & Home Grown Meals

Here's some Yu-Choi greens, Pumpkin Blossom, Red Onion, Alpine Strawberries, regular Strawbeeries, Peas and Snow Peas.
another day: More Strawberries, Rugen Alpine and regular ones, some snow peas and our first tomatoes of the season. Unfortunately the tomato plants are suffering from mites again this year, fortunately they are the potted ones, not the ones in the beds, so we're going to destroy these potted ones and throw out the infested vegetation. Hopefully that will keep them off the other plants. (cross my fingers)
Fruit Salad with HG(homegrown) Alpine and regular Strawberries, HG Canned Mandarins, HG Canned Guavas, HG canned Loquats and organic apples from a Co-Op.
Our first home-made tortillas that I made tonight.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Harvest Updates

32.6 pounds of carrots!
Here they are all washed up and ready for storage in the fridge. Hope they last us a while.
strawberries, peas, zucchini blossoms, and shiso leaves
another morning, all Rugen Alpine strawberries, it was delish in the homemade yogurt(soy)
Here's the Garlic that I braided! (well the ones that looked good enough. The ugly ones got peeled, skinned and placed in the freezer.)

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Garden Updates

This tomato is growing in a 15 gal pot with lots of homemade compost. So far, so good!
The veggie garden, looking from the south-east part of the garden. Foreground beds have Tomatoes  on the right, Cilantro flowering(coriander) and behind the Cilantro are the 3 sisters; corn, pumpkin and pole beans. So far, the pole beans are losing, in the battle for sun.
The "pond" area Tomatoes, onions and garlic chives seem to be loving this place.
Zucchini, Watermelon, Cucumbers, Pole beans, Corn and Amaranth(which is losing ground for sun)
A month ago, it looked like this
Our blessed Fig Tree, I don't know how other figs grow, but this thing is prolific. On just one branch, you can see a cluster of 6 ~ 10 fruits in various stages!
I'm trying to grow pumpkin in the compost, we'll see if it works. The soil in there keeps sinking as the compost is broken down by the worms and bacteria, so the pumpkin plant is sinking too.
Here's the Summer Daikon, Broccoli, Bok Choi, Yu Choi and Radishes. This is where the Garlic and Cilantro were growing.
Peach tree I named "Alauria" and behind her is "Bridgett" the Fig tree. 
The Asian Pear Tree very sick this year. It's shoots just wilt over night. Is it verticillium wilt?
This is our messy side of the back yard, it's over-grown with thornless black berry, and some self-starting peas. The peas decided they wanted to grow where they were composted. (After we dug a huge hole to compost some large bulky branches and coarse leaves, we piled on the dead pea plants and filled it with soil. Rainy season allowed the peas to sprout and here they are producing a crop. 
Dwarf Cavendish, I'm starting to run out of patience for this one... it hasn't produced any flowers YET!
This is supposed to be Rhubarb, but the stem is not red. Do you think it is? We received this as a gift.
New Zealand Spinach is VERY easy to grow here. It self-seeds it's self every year, this one found a nice shady spot, and it's leaves are very tender.
Kyohou Grapes getting bigger!
Green Table Grapes are growing too
Blackberries trained onto our chainlink by the pineapple guava tree and chrysanthemums