Some Garden Pictures (April 2011)

Hey Y’all. Here are some pictures of our garden so far. 

 

These are some potted mint plants. Mint can be very invasive and weedy in gardens and can be detrimental to other plants. Thus, we find it best to keep them in pots.

We have a small herb bed on the side of our porch. We wanted this to be close to our backdoor off the kitchen so that we can just run out and grab some quick culinary enhancements for any cooking we’re doing.

Most of our backyard has been utilized for growing space. Not only will this provide us with tons of delicious produce, but it also minimizes the need to do things like mow the yard.

Here are some mustard greens and radishes. Our radishes are just getting to ideal eating size. They are delicious but quite hot and powerful.

Some mixed lettuce and more mustard greens. I am particularly fond of the red mustard, though, now that it is getting a bit older, it is definitewly taking on a bit more heat.

Arugula is probably my favorite garden green. I find it both delicious and versetile and use it for all sords of cooking as well as just a general garnish. Being in the brassica family it tends to pick up a good bit of heat as it gets older (though not as much as mustard greens) but last year we found that the older arugula is wonderful when made into a pesto with significant amounts of garlic, a good strong cheese (like aged Gouda), and nuts (pinenuts or walnuts seem to be best).

Two tomato transplants. The one on the left is a transplant we grew from seed, while the one on the right is a store bought transplant. We’ll have something like 80+ tomato plants this year.

Garden grown lettuce is so much better than anything I have ever found at a store. It’s flavor is fresh and crisp, perfect for a quick salad or on a sandwich.

Chard is another favorite green of mine. It has a flavor that is very similar to spinach (earthy and rich) as well as beets (which chard is essentially the same as without the roots).

Bok Choy, or Chinese Cabbage, is another brassica green (essentially the same species as turnips but breed for the greens instead of the roots). Bok Choy is not always my favorite of the spring greens but it does provide a great crunchy texture to whatever it is included in. It can also be quickly stir fried as an addative green to a number of dishes.

One of the vegetables I am most excited about growing this year are potatoes. We didn’t get any into our garden last year, but this year we’ve gotten a ton in. Potatoes have so many uses that it is exciting to think of all the things we’ll be able to make with our harvest. We grew a number of unique colored varieties like purple, pink, and red fleshed potatoes.

We put our onions in a bit late this year and so might not get the ideal bulbs, but we should still be able to use them as scallions, which is almost just as good.

These are young achocha vines (yeah, I know what the leaves resemble, but trust me, they’re not even close). Achocha is a strange vine vegetable that is closely related to cucumbers and squashes. The fruits have a generally cucumber-ish flavor and texture, however, they fruit much later in the season and so provide a cucumber alternative once the more common vegetables are past their production.

This is a small patch of our basil (we’ll be growing much more throughout the garden). Basil is definitely one of our favorite herbs to grow every year. besides being a great culinary addative to many dishes, we love to use it to make fresh pesto.

 

 I feel obliged to point out that it was Eliza who did almost all of the planting in our garden so far (actually, almost all of the work in general).  You can see a good “before and after” picture of our yard from Eliza’s recent blog post.

Things are really coming along nicely.  We have also started building our chicken coop for the chicks that we will be getting next week.  I can’t wait until we’ve got most everything in working order.

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~ by Nathaniel on April 25, 2011.