The Latest and Greatest

written by Yvonne

Between vacations, comic conventions and other happenings, there's been a lag in news from the garden. So here's an updated. For the most part, ignore the dates stamped on the pictures as some are incorrect.

The carrots have done well. We pulled several and used them in salads. It was very satisfying to use homegrown carrots, but I have to say I wasn't too jazzed about their flavor. The few that we grew last year were much more flavorful. We probably left them in too long and now that the hot weather is here, they've lost some of their carrotiness.

We've grown one whole blackberry! The first year after planting, you really aren't supposed to get any berries at all so we were thrilled to see some growing at all.  And yes, we picked it off and each ate half.

Here are a couple of raspberries too.  We left them on the plant for another week.  Maybe this weekend we'll have enough for each us to each have a whole berry to ourselves.

This was a harvest of carrots, squash, kale, potatoes, the last of the snow peas, and some dill. The potatoes were really fun to dig up.  It was like a treasure hunt.  I made kale and potatos with sauted snow peas on the side for dinner last weekend.  It was a meal that came completely from our garden - how cool!  I dried the dill in our Ronco food dehydrator.  The house smelled SO good as it was drying.

Although we didn't get too much lettuce this spring, we had enough for three nice big salads. I harvested the last of it and made salads with snow peas and carrots for lunch. We'll use this spot for more herbs. Hopefully we're not to late to get more summer seeds in the ground.

We harvested the last of the snow peas on the vines then pulled up the plants to make room for okra.

Beans. Wow. They grow big and fast. I just love seeing these long Barlotto bean stalks reaching for the sky.

Here is one of the Barlotto bean flowers.

 And behold - a Barlotto bean!

Kale, beets and garlic all doing well.  As previously mentioned, we've started harvesting kale. This weekend we'll see if the beets are doing anything under the soil. If not, we'll rip those out to make room for something else.

Cauliflower grew big leafs, but no actual cauliflower so we pulled them out. So far, TYs VeggiePatch has still not managed to produce broccoli or cauliflower. We'll try again next season.

Squash is another story altogether. We made sure to sow only two squash plants this year and this is what we got.... they're still HUGE!  Next year, we're planting one plant and one plant only.

When you peak under the big leaves, you see tons of flowers and tons squash being formed (next two pictures).

And here is the money shot Tom has been waiting for. Look closely and you'll see a bee (he SWEARS it's one of his bees) inside the squash blossom doing it's job.

Peppers and tomatoes starting to make their presence know.

And here we have our Royal Burgundy string beans.  These are a bush variety versus the Barlottos which are pole beans.  See how they've chosen not to latch onto the stakes?

Here is our first Royal Burgundy beans! When you look at the plants, you can't really see them. But just as with the squash, when you move the leaves out of the way and look 'under the skirt', there they are.  One of my favorite meals is Phroney's green beans and potatoes. It's simple and delicious. This weekend we'll try her recipe with these Royal Burgundy beans and dig up some more potatoes.

Next week I'll take a picture of the inside of the beans - it's BRIGHT green!

Some friends came over to visit the garden and to take a look at the bee hive. Olive found an apple under the apple tree and played with all afternoon.