June 30, 2010

Food, food and more food

Last week and this week, we've been enjoying the fruits of our labor.  It is just so much fun to walk into the back yard and pick dinner from the garden.  Here we pulled beets to make a roasted beet, lentil, and goat cheese salad.


We noticed that the potato plants have been dying off.  We checked our sources and learned that this is a sign that it's time to harvest them. We could have left the potatoes in the ground for longer to get bigger potatoes, but new potatoes the most flexible to cook with so we decided to 'dig in' and pull them out.


The big one on the left is the original potato that Tom planted about sever weeks ago.  Once you dig up the roots and turn the plant over, all these small, red potatoes fall out.  It's so cool!


We kept digging up the plants and pulling out potatoes...


until we had a nice little pile.  I made a big potato, basil frittata for brunch with our bounty.


Elsewhere in the garden, the eggplant plants are getting big.


The soybeans plants are just about ready to pick.
Peppers are forming...


as are tomatoes.


And the mystery cucumbers are doing well too.


What do you mean "this doesn't look like a cucumber"?  You say it looks more like a watermelon?  Hmmm.  You might be right.

Funny story.  These plants were in the group of mystery plants that sprouted in box one. One plant definitely turned out to be a sunflower - no question there.  Then these guys came up. The leaves and flowers looked like squash, so we decided they were squash.  Then we saw runners forming and decided they were cucumbers.  If you'll recall in last week's post, we threaded the "cucumbers" up through a tomato cage because cucumbers do better growing vertically.  We were so proud of ourselves for being such smart farmers.

Then last weekend I took a look at the "cucumbers" and realized HOLY COW these aren't cucumbers at all - they are watermelons!!!!


There were three big guys already forming! We promptly and carefully un-threaded the vines out of the tomato cage and laid them on the ground. So this plant has been squash, cucumbers, and now watermelons. I think this is the final mystery solved... unless the watermelons turn into corn or something.  :)


 ~Y



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