garden and food equals love

i love my garden. It gives me food and as we all know food equals love. So here is an update of poor quality pictures.





Beets. Who knew that I would like beets. I guess before I've only had pickled beets and they aren't that great, so I figured all beats are icky. Turns out I like fresh garden beets so I'm glad i grew some this year. They taste a bit like dirt, but I love jicama and it tastes like dirt so I guess its not to suprising... Anyways I decided to grow more beets since they did fairly well and you can use the whole plant. This picture also has the one turnip I've grown. Fresh turnips aren't so good. But once they are cooked they aren't so bad.














Here they are all washed up and ready to cook. I cooked them up for dinner last Sunday, along with mango chicken and jalapeno sausage dogs (left over from family reunion), and our first calabacitas of the year, along with strawberries from the garden.










Happy produce from the garden!










Yesterday (Sunday) for dinner we had calabacitas, chicken tikamasala (with spinach from the garden), and drop biscuits with the currant jam I just made a couple of days ago.




just the 2nd year and the little bushes were loaded!





NOt sure if they were totally ripe as they are so tart, but I didn't want to wait so that the birds could get them or they fall off (that happened to the saskatoon berries this year, only one bush produced a small handful and then the birds got them and I only got two =(


I got a little over two cups worth. I cooked them down and strained them and made a beautiful red still tangy jam.



The jar was prettier before we ate it.














I've started to get small handful of raspberries everyday. Usually I just pop them in my mouth when I go out in the mornings, but I decided to share these. They are starting to pick up a bit more which is good as the strawberries are slowing down a bit.



While I was looking something up on the web, I stumbled across something about eating mushrooms from your backyard. So I did it.

No worries, its just a puffball which is the easiest to identify. It can only be confused with an "earthball" which would've just made me sick and not killed me. But I didn't confuse it, I fried it up in butter and ate one piece. Then since that didn't kill me I ate the rest the next day. Tasted like butter.













Think this one is edible but since I can't identify it for sure, I'll have to let it go. Didn't get a picture of another one I tried to figure out yesterday...









So on the way home from the reunion I was feeling bad about being the only one to not get to hang out with some family so I stopped by a garden center on my way home and picked up another Himrod grape to replace the dead one out front. I talked to the grape the rest of the way back about how its in a great spot and I'll trim it way down in the fall so it doesn't dry out like the last one did ( I think it grew so big that its roots couldn't replace the winter moisture lost). Then when I got home, I noticed a tiny sprout at the base of the dead one. Sure enough in a couple of days it had put out 3 leaves and grown at least an inch a day. It was alive! YAY! I couldn't just get rid of the new grape, we had bonded! So now I have two out front. The old one is now bigger then the new one. I can't believe how fast its growing! (in this picture you can see an edge of evening primrose that is just gorgeous this year)

Here are garden pics. Yes my garden is messy. Oh well. I'm over it.

Potatoes

Carrots (brocoli to the back left)

peas and lettuce just about all done. (rhubarb back left)

Cucumbers just about ready to start

Cucumbers and melons to left side, tomatoes in the greenhouses (only one of them is almost to the top

Beans. Couple have blossoms on them today.

Peppers to the left, Onions in front, and zuchinni behind.

Picture of banana bread since this is a post on food, and I didn't take a picture of the rhubarb cake. It was tasty!