Tomato

Tonight was the night to pick our very first beefsteak tomato, and it sure was tasty! 

 The two tomatoes - the one on the left was just picked in our garden, and the one on the right was store bought. We are so ecstatic that our tomato is the bigger of the two! Diane sliced it open, and we added it to our burgers for dinner. 

  Diane also clipped and used the Bok Choi as lettuce. brilliant!!

New Seeds, Can't wait!

 I had seen on a blog post... somewhere a year or so back, about these really cool looking ears of corn. They were called Glass Corn. This corn has a history - which starts with a man named Carl Barns. He was a part-Cherokee farmer in Oklahoma and cultivated many generations of corn to what we have pictured below. Read the story here.

 So we've ordered a packet of Glass Corn seeds, and also a packet of Wild Luffa, The luffa produces dozens of 2-3" fruit, and once dry you remove the skin to have the 'sponge'. Yavapai (Devil's Claw) has 12" claws (seed pods) with beautiful and fragrant flowers that resemble orchids. and Bird's Eye. the Bird's Eye blooms light blue to purple petals, is drought tolerant and has a slight chocolate fragrance. 

    Wild Luffa

    Devil's Claw

    Birds Eye

No idea where we will plant them. but we can't wait to start seeding them and watching them grow!

Mahalo Sara!

 We received a bag of worm castings from Sara on Friday. I'll have to go look - but it seems that 1D has a worm box and they are recycling Thor food scraps. 

 I've mixed the castings with a little potting soil and regular dirt and placed it around the cucumbers and eggplants. 

 our sunflower still has his head hanging down, but you can see here - the seeds are developing nicely. 

 Diane painted on a piece of wood: 'Welcome to our jungle', while she was inside working on projects, I finished up the outlining and added some flowers.

 We then attached more wood and placed it into our garden. We are thinking of planing tons of flowers and the wildflowers to really make it pop!

 We are hoping to harvest our 1st beefsteak tomato tonight. it should be all red and perfect. 

 Yesterday was spent weeding, planting 12 corn, watermellon, another squash and nasturtiums where the soil was bare.

 More photos later on today and tomorrow. very sunburnt today., silly me thinking an overcast sky wouldn't hurt... you'd think I'd have learnd by now. 

: /

Little Rewards

tonight I grilled up a few burgers, and while they were cooking I pulled a few veggies from the garden. 

One day we hope to have fresh asparagus, I hear it takes a good long season or two to even get it going. 

Diane pulled some cilantro and we had that on our burgers as well. 

then I made 2 types of sauces. Teriyaki and a Jamacian Jerk 

the Teri is basically shoyu and sugar, with garlic and ginger. the jerk has a ton of stuff. but only Thyme and a Habanaro came from the garden. We just have to add some chicken to these and you have an instant dinner.

   then sneak in a few freshly picked strawberries and make some tea from dried mint and stevia leaves!

Here comes Peter Cottontail...

Weeds. How can something so beautiful be so bad so for the garden? Well they we plucked, picked, cut, snipped and mowed over today. One day we'll have a nice lawn of just grass... one day...

The back yard was cleaned and fixed up on Saturday. The side of the house we've been wanting to do a raised spiral garden. It'll be a big project, so for now we cleaned it up and used the logs from the lemon tree that we cut down as a border. 

The corn was pulled on friday, sadly it didn't give us anything. So we've reseeded more, but for now the boxes we moved and filled with the extra dirt that we had from landscaping the yard. We also  pulled the watermelon from the earth box and planted those in the ground as well. I'm hoping they don't go into to much shock. They were surviving but not producing in the earth boxes. 

We added another few tombstones and sectioned off the top of the hill. What are we going to plant? no idea. :)

But along with the nasturtiums in the middle, thats where we planted the watermelon. I unfortunately stepped on a nasturtium plant., and snapped it. Diane is going to try and root it and save the pant. I was thinking of just adding the leaves to a salad. since the flowers and leaves are edible. 

Cutting down the last part of the Wedelia. it has a massive root system and is killing the weed whacker line. So we bought heavy duty garbage bags and some garden staples. The bags are covering the plants and will hopefully kill whats under it. Any plant that dares pop out will be sprayed with roundup.   

On the front side of the yard. Diane will get her trellis. She saw these long metal things at Home Depot. I think they are for concrete. But I attached them to the under side of the roof and will place the bottom part in concrete for support. then we will let the lilikoi vine up them to create a beautiful entry into the garden

Happy Easter Everyone!

I gotta go hide some eggs for the kids now!

Good Friday

It's been a Good Friday for sure., we cut down the wedelia on the side of the house - soon it'll add garden space!

we grew carrots in a plastic jug. they weren't so big and so neither are the carrots. but hey! it's the 1st time we've grown them and guess what... it totally tasted like a carrot! lol

the sunflower is dropping. sadly it'll soon be gone. we have other ones around the yard - not as big as this beauty. we've also re-seeded another x6 sunflowers. hopefully they'll bloom around August. 

I was removing the corn today. it was a failure. we had an ear of corn... kinda developed. but uneatable. like the sunflower - we've reseeded another x6. let's see if we can do better this time.

as gardening is trial and error. :)

but I found this big bug/beetle on the corn. no idea what it is!

x4 cucumber plants, and a squash in the middle. these plants are doing very well. I think we'll soon have a bumper crop of fresh cucumbers. 

Diane picked some eggplant the other day and made a lasagna out if them. last night we picked one more - I sliced it up, drizzled garlic olive oil and sprinkled garlic over them. then I grilled them along with the steaks. 

Sunflower

Now thats a beautiful sunflower! It opened on the night of the lunar eclipse.
just seeded x6 more of them. lets hope we can get a few more as strong and as beautiful as this one!

Monday Morning Happiness

Taking a stroll through our garden this morning. the 8' sunflower is just starting to open up.

Hot peppers and bell peppers are coming in nicely. 

as well as our 'never fail' cucumbers

We started seeding again. this time we have more sunflowers (they make Diane happy) and nasturtiums, snow peas, acorn squash and more

You can see parts of our watering system. it's a drip irrigation and goes straight to the big/important plants. 

here we added some wire 'fencing' it's going to hold the peas, wildflowers and other plants that vine. it's not permanent, but sturdy enough to support the plants

Beans beans beans

Beans beans beans, the magical fruit more you eat the more you toot... hehehe.

truth be told. I don't do anything to our beans. the plants we have in the earth box are a little less under developed - they have full sun in the middle of the back yard. 

the ones I placed by the back fence - deep green, tall and produce better pods. 

since we had a busy week, and then the craft fair - I have not checked them at all. so when I have the plants a little shot of miracle grow last night - I picked a few pods.

usually I pick the large green pods that have just a little color to them. 

but I notice a few pods that - I thought - died on the vine. I picked them to keep the plant clean and to show Diane the brown paper like pods.

they were in the kitchen and we didn't get around to them last night. when I got up this morning, Diane had already opened one up to look at them

how cool no? just like a regular pinto bean. maybe if we let them all 'die' on the vine we can make a soup! :P

so if you catch the bean pods early - with a light green or just some color. they go excellent on salads. otherwise - let them turn brown for your tan beans and save them for soups... oh... or let the kids have them to make those bean and glue pictures we did back in Kindergarden! 

maybe Susie will want them...

Drip System

Diane and I were at Home Depot today. We picked up a drip system for the garden. 

it took a few hours of planning, and now the majority of the big plants - like the eggplant, fennel, tomato, cucumber and kabocha will have a steady watering time.

we also picked up a larger system for the back yard. but alas - the sun is down and we can't see nor do a decent job, so it'll have to wait till tomorrow or at some time this week. 

The Craft Fair

We are meeting tons of nice people here at the craft fair today. It's great to chat about plants and more with everyone. 

we made all sorts of goodies for the craft fair., and we tried to use all that we had from the garden or upcycled. 

that carbon footprint is getting smaller and smaller.  :)