Living Insanity's Loving Food

I picked three things from the garden today, a zucchini, a pickling cucumber, and some kind of pepper. I wish there was more! Last year we had a lot more around this time.

Blueberry Bush

We have never started seeds indoors before and also we've never used our own seeds from our mature vegetables (not bought in a packet). We have babies though! It's exciting since it has only been 1 week.

We are starting our indoor seeds this weekend. We bought some shelves, heat/sun lamps, and some containers. To start we are using what my husband seeded from all his pepper plants. Hopefully the effort to save seeds is worth it and we have a few plants by May when we will plant everything outside. We are also going to toss in a few of my herbs, cilantro and dill because I have seeded my plants and had success with using their seeds the next season. Here is our set up!

These pictures are a little old. We have HUGE broccoli in the garden right now. I'm sure we'll be eating it very soon. Here are some photos of our broccoli, purple cabbage, and spinach which is growing in a large rubbermaid tub with drainage holes.

During the summer I would harvest these guys and just have a small handful at a time. It was not enough to make a real side dish out of them. They seem to really be enjoying this cooler fall weather. I clipped enough beans today to toss them in the beef stew I was making.

As you can see in our harvest photo we have many cucumbers and this is after I've given neighbors some of our extra cucumber, squash, and zucchini away! I made three jars of pickles with some of our cucumbers. We are growing pickling and slicing cucumbers. I used this refrigerator pickle recipe and also added some sliced onion to my jars. Three clean jars with lids pickling-type cucumbers, sliced into spears 3 cloves garlic, peeled 1 bunch fresh dill 1 Tbs. pickling spice (I bought mine at Williams Sonoma) 1 quart water 1 cup distilled white vinegar 4 Tbs. kosher salt (I used pink sea salt) Half of an onion, thinly sliced Add the water, vinegar, and salt to a saucepan. Bring to a boil and turn off the heat. Let the mixture come to room temperature. Layer in the jars the dill, a garlic clove in each jar, some of the pickling spice in each jar, the cucumber spears, and top with the onion slices. Pour the room temperature brine into the jars. Refrigerate pic...

Our eggplant and cucumbers are now ready for harvest. We also had a baby honeydew melon. We have two types of eggplant in our garden. This long skinny purple one has produced three eggplant so far

We are able to harvest some of our veggies now :) we've harvested yellow squash and a hot wax pepper and a cubanelle pepper. Yellow Squash from last week, it's bigger and with a lot more squash right now We have a baby eggplant right now. It's about 1 inch long so far. The flower stem seems too weak to hold an eggplant. We'll see if it grows to edible size. Some peppers which are supposed to turn red and be very hot! Like a thai chili We have about 10 green baby tomatoes and we still have some tomato flowers so we'll have even more tomatoes growing soon. My husband's work gave him several tomato plants. We drilled holes in the bottom of rubbermaid containers and made it into a tomato planter My honeydew vine is out of control. It's taken over an entire veggie box. Lesson learned for next year. Give melons lots of space all to themselves!

Check out how big everything we planted on Mother's Day has gotten in the first raised veggie box! The flowers on some of the peppers have started turning into little peppers. They are really cute! I have one lone strawberry that is turning red so far. Hopefully more will follow. The nursery had some new plants out so we are trying some beans, watermelon, cucumber, zucchini, honeydew and spinach in the newest raised veggie box. The plants seem so small in comparison.

Here are some of my plants from last weekend. The cilantro and dill have really filled out and the strawberries have flowered. My husband built a raised vegetable box and we filled it with tomato plants, pepper plants (hot and sweet ones), and some eggplant. Cilantro

See those tiny little sprouts? I lovingly collected the dill seeds and cilantro seeds when my herbs bolted (went to seed) last summer. Then the seeds were planted a few weeks ago and here they are growing! The rosemary plant is new. I did not dig up my rosemary plant for the winter and bring it inside and therefore needed to buy a new plant. I will dig it up this fall and bring this guy inside! See my chives? I didn't have to plant them this year! Those chives came back from last year without any extra care from me. Chives are awesome! New this year I bought sage because I ate incredible fries with fried sage in Boston in December and I also bought Cinnamon Basil. Last year we had three basil plants, Michael, Thai, and Greek. The Thai and Greek were the biggest producers of the three. I'm sure I'll end up buying a Thai or Greek plant soon.