radishes

In the spring Maggie got to plant some radish seeds in little paper cups with the moms group. As soon as our seeds sprouted we transplanted them to the garden and let them grow wild. Since none of us likes to eat them we figured we'd just let them grow and see how big they could get before we needed the space to plant our summer garden. They got pretty big.

zucchini

In June Chad and Maggie picked the first zucchini from our spring garden. Here is Maggie cooking it in her microwave and holding it. Ultimately the entire thing went into summer soup.

Summer garden

In late spring we finally got around to planting our summer garden. I wasn't sure if it was going to be too late, but it turns out we were fine. Maggie helped Chad and they planted four varieties of tomato, Japanese cucumber, zucchini, basil, radishes (from a mom's group day) and watermelon (seedlings from our friends--thank you!).

sugar snap peas

This winter we grew sugar snap peas and man, they were prolific. We had more peas than we knew what to do with, but fortunately all three of us loved munching on them straight from the garden. Even Mags would go back there to see what she could reach and snack on. Definitely something we're going to plant again next winter.

carrots

Our winter carrots are done and here is the test group Chad pulled a bit ago. Much bigger than they have been in the past, I'm pretty proud of ourselves this time.

Garden Update

So our winter (if that's what we're calling it this year) garden is doing well this month. The broccoli has started to flower, as have the snow peas. The peas, in fact, are even starting to sprout. The carrots are getting bigger, but I have no clue when they'll be ready so we'll wait a bit longer before we start pulling them. In another few days we'll taste our broccoli and snow peas. Yeah!

oranges

Last week, because our area has been freezing overnight, we picked the oranges that have been growing in our backyard. Maggie helped me. Our tiny trees produced 12 oranges this year, all full and round and bright and, well, slightly sour. Not sour enough to toss, but not sweet like the few we had last year. Darn! Fortunately I like fruit, even when it's slightly on the sour side, so these oranges will not go to waste.

Garden update

Our lettuce has been growing steadily in our garden. Baby romaine is great. And easy to grow!

Uhhhh...

On Sunday we worked on our garden. We thinned the plants so that the garden veggies would have plenty of room to grow. Maggie helped us by putting dirt in a bucket. Additionally, she pretended to eat some of the food that we are growing. Pretended so well, in fact, that she believed it herself and took a nice big bite of dirt. If only you could have seen her tongue before I was able to grab my camera. Yum.

Fall Planting

 

Chad, Maggie and I finished tearing out our summer garden (goodbye tomatoes) on Sunday and prepped the box for our fall/winter garden. We've mostly skipped cool weather crops in the past so this year will be interesting to see how they turn out. We planted baby romaine lettuce, carrots, broccoli and peas and Maggie really enjoyed helping us this time, especially with the big the pea seeds. It'll be fun for all of us to watch this new garden grow and we'll keep you updated on how things are turning out.

More organic veggies...

...but not from our house this time. We went to the seasonal Organic Farm Summer Field Days & U-pick sale at Fresno State and enjoyed harvesting food as a family. If you remember (if you don't, shame on you--just kidding--click here) the last time Maggie and I went she was only a few months old. She's changed so much since then and now loves picking out and sampling maynos (tomatoes). Fun to have Chad along with us this time too. The bummer was that at the end I somehow managed to squish some of our juicy strawberries all over my shorts. Frustrating! Anyway, here's what we bought this time: Heirloom tomatoes (cherokee purple and tigerella), strawberries, zucchini, cucumbers (diva), cantaloupe and honeydew melon. Yum!

Tomatoes

Those of you who are around Maggie regularly know how much she loves tomatoes. Her favorites are the warm ones she picks straight from the vines in our garden. As happy as I am that she likes the fruit, we'd feel much more comfortable with her eating them after they're sliced, while she's sitting down and supervised. The tomatoes we grow are small and delicious and the perfect size for getting stuck in your throat. Yikes. So...we've started a new thing where after we pick our tomatoes for dinner, Maggie brings the basket of them into the house and helps me wash them. We move a big chair to the sink and she gets to stand on it and give the tomatoes a good scrubbing. She loves it and it's one less (easy) thing I have to do. Now, she may fall off that big chair and break her arm, but at least she's not going to get a tomato stuck in her throat...

Grapes, our second summer

I thought we'd remove our grape vine after last year's buggy attempt (see here for a refresher) but before we got our lazy butts around too it, our vine started to grow. This year it really took off. We have leaves and vines all over and these past few weeks we started getting ripe grapes. I'm not sure why we didn't get bugs this year (still working totally organically) but the good news is that we didn't. And the grapes are delicious! Maggie's been scarfing them down and I'm happy to report that we have a few more large bunches soon to be ready. I'm glad our lazy butts didn't take the vine down last year because this year it was totally worth it.

Lettuce

Earlier this week we noticed that some of our lettuce was ready to be harvested. With Maggie's help (she put the leaves in the bowl after Chad clipped them) we were able to get a dinner's worth of romaine. Chad and I enjoyed it with our meal immediately after but Maggie didn't want to have anything to do with it. She kept asking for a mato (tomato) from the garden. Unfortunately none of those are ready yet.

Gourds

Way back in the olden days we planted birdhouse gourd seeds in our garden. After a few months those seeds spouted and grew beautiful vines, leaves and robust green gourds. When they finished growing we cut them from their vines to give them the opportunity to dry out and harden. They've been curing for approximately two years now which was a year longer than necessary. Last weekend Chad decided to clean a few of them and turn one into an actual birdhouse. It's not a quick or easy process, but it was worth it and he did an excellent job.

Priorities

I have a lot on my plate this week. Piles of housework to finish, a number of errands to run, email messages to respond to, and basically plenty of catching up to do. So what made top on my list this gorgeous afternoon? Harvesting lavender, of course. Yep. In my mind that seemed to be the most pressing task and somehow inched its way to number one. Bummer of a way to spend the last day of summer, huh? You should smell our kitchen, my shirt and my hands.

Grapes

The good news is that our grape vine grew really well this year. It produced a bunch of big sweet grapes that were fun to watch grow. The bad news? The vine brought with it a billion bugs. And gross bug poop. Like a ton of it. After Chad gathered a large boxful of grapes to clean and sort to give to friends, we gave them a closer look and decided to dump the whole lot. And I think we're going to pull the vine. Bummer! 

With that said, the grapes we did eat were delicious.  But so much for our organic, pesticide-free grape experiment.

Tomatoes

We have four tomato plants growing in our yard. Two are overflowing with unripe tomatoes, one is starting to show promise, and the last was only planted a couple weeks back so it has some catching up to do. We've had a handful of tomatoes in our meals this past week and unfortunately I never though about photographing them in their bright red glory until after they were picked, cut and eaten. Figures. So here's a photo of an almost-ripe tomato. I imagine we'll eat him this weekend, along with a few of his close neighbors and friends.

Now, I know what you're thinking: another boring blog post about tomatoes. Either swimming lessons or the garden--time to show us something new. And I agree with you. These next few weeks are going to be action packed so stay tuned for fun different posts with cute photos. At least that's what I'm hoping...

Asparagus and Raspberries

For the past three weeks we house-sat for our neighbors. They have a super fantastic backyard with a pool and a garden. And they grow unusual things. OK, not unusual, but plants I've never attempted to grow before. Like asparagus. And golden raspberries. While they were gone we ate the stuff that was ripe. Oh come on, it would all rot otherwise and we certainly didn't want that...

Early Harvest

So far not much in our garden is ready for harvest. We have lots of greening tomatoes and I expect many of them will be ripe in the next few weeks.  Our grapevine, surprisingly, is doing really really well. We can't believe how many bunches of grapes are growing. Since this is the first year they've sprouted we're not sure how long it'll take for them to be ready to eat. So here's a photo of what they look like at this point. To give you some perspective, these grapes are each bigger than a pea but smaller than a marble. That's the best comparison I can muster.