What to do with green tomatoes?

Trying to grow tomatoes in a cold climate automatically means that you will end up with a lot of green tomatoes at the end of the season.  Even in this warmer climate, I wound up with many unripe tomatoes.  In the past few years, I've been experimenting with different things to do with these little guys, since I don't want to waste anything that can actually be used. 

Of course, there's the cool sounding fried green tomatoes, which I don't really care for unless they're not truly green.  Even when I do make them, I'm usually the only person that eats them, since they just look funny to everyone else.

In past research, I was surprised to find that the green taco sauce (that my dad has to have) is made from green tomatoes.  I found a few recipes online (this one is complicated.  There are simpler ones) and tried it out.  It turned out too hot for my kids, but the adults liked it.

I have also made green tomato relish, which tastes just like the relish that everybody loves on their hot dogs.  I'll post the recipe at the end of this post.  My mother has been busy canning jars of this all fall after my sister dumped a few boxes of green tomatoes in her lap.

Since the relish is already being covered, I decided that this year, I wanted to make mock raspberry jam with my green tomatoes.  Don't laugh, it really turns out looking and tasting like the real thing.  The texture is right and the tomato seeds look like raspberry seeds.  I couldn't find my recipe though, so I was thrilled to see the recipe posted at a friends blog, Home Maid Simple.  I guess I'd better get busy sorting and washing my tomatoes.

I have also just been informed that you can make a mock apple pie with green  tomatoes, but I don't think I'll try that just yet.

What have you done with your green tomatoes?

Green Tomato Relish

Grind and drain:
13 cucumbers
6 onions
20 large green tomatoes
2 green peppers
2 red peppers (or green or yellow...)

Add:
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp ground cloves
8 cups sugar
4 cups vinegar

Boil 1 hour

Make a paste:
4 Tbs flour
2 Tbs dry mustard
2 Tbs turmeric

Add paste and stir until thick.  Can pints in water bath for 10 minutes (4500 ft elev).  16 minutes above 7000 ft.

The October Garden Update

This is the first year that I have still had a garden in October.  Honestly, I've never had a garden survive past August due to early frosts in the mountains, but living in a warmer climate has changed things for me.  While the plants are still alive, things are pretty much finished.  I harvested all the tomatoes that were attempting to turn red this morning and this is what I got.

The North box looks pretty sad since the buttercup squash attacked the tomato trellis and then fell down, pulling most of the tomatoes with it.  There are still many green tomatoes on the plants and I have plans for them, but they will have to wait until I have all my equipment, or until I'm planning a trip back to the ranch. 

I found one more lemon cucumber on the vine, almost ready and a final one ball squash, also nearly ready to be picked.  From three sweet pepper plants I will get a total of three peppers.  One nearly made it to red before my little garden helper proudly picked it for me.  (sigh)  Another is a deep purple color, trying to make it to red and the last is a stubborn green.  I probably won't plant peppers again. It was an impulse buy at the farmer's market anyway.  We just don't use them much and I don't care for the after-taste of green peppers especially.

As soon as I get all those green tomatoes taken care of and the last of the other plants are finished, I'm looking forward to pulling everything out and finally seeing some order in the garden, even if it's just plain dirt.  I may even find another onion under there.  The jungle of tomato and squash plants is looking old and tired and I think it's almost time to put everything to bed.  I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to try to get some spinach out of there before winter hits. 

Make your own garden fresh salsa!

Here's another drive-by posting!  I keep thinking that things will slow down a bit now that school has been going for a few weeks and my design jobs have finished up, but things still feel crazy around here.

The weather has cooled quite a bit, but the tomatoes are still producing wonderfully.  It is so fun to actually get a harvest from tomato plants.  In the mountains of Wyoming, I would just be getting a few red tomatoes when it would frost and kill everything.  It seems like we would always get a hard frost in August sometime and then another around Labor Day.  In between, we would still have nice summery weather, but squash and tomatoes don't forgive you for a hard frost.

So here I am, getting buried in those wonderful tomatoes and I keep telling myself that I should put together a batch of spaghetti sauce, since we eat a lot of spaghetti and pizza during the year.  But I just can't seem to collect enough tomatoes to make a big enough batch to make the canning effort worthwhile.

Why, you ask?  Because I love fresh salsa!  Every time the counter starts to be overwhelmed with tomatoes, I get a craving for salsa.  I whip up a big batch of the stuff, and then realize that I don't have any corn chips, or that my cilantro is all mushy, so I have made several extra bike trips to the store in my salsa making adventures.  Then I end up eating most of the batch while trying to get the flavors just right, so I have to start over again in order to have some salsa to share with the husband.  There have been many days that I have only had salsa for lunch.  I was hoping to start a new diet trend, but alas, I haven't dropped any inches on my salsa diet.

In case anyone out there is wanting some fresh garden salsa, but isn't quite sure how to get started, let me share my formula with you.  It's not really a recipe because I don't have a single measurement to give you.  Here's what I've got:

Fresh Garden Salsa
-Chop up lots of tomatoes.  Till your bowl is about half to 3/4 full. 
-Chop up the onions.  I like a lot of onion, but you can take it easy here.
-Chop up some cilantro.  I love cilantro, but if you go too crazy here it makes things a bit bitter, so I just do enough that you see a bit of green in every scoop.
-Add some salt and then add some more.
-Pour in a few splashes of lemon or lime juice.  I prefer lemon for some reason.
-Stir and scoop some out on a chip to taste.
-Add salt and lemon as needed to reach your favorite taste.
-Add more tomatoes, onion and cilantro if you taste test too much.
-Eat and repeat.

I guess I'll have to find a farmer before I can any sauce.  I'm not sure how much longer these tomatoes will keep coming.

My late August garden update

Okay, so it's a week later than promised.  The school thing has thrown me for a loop.  Plus the job thing takes time.  Plus, I ran out of planner pages and I'm just floating from task to task, not really knowing if I'm getting the important stuff done or not. 

What was a jungle of green has kind of cleared out a bit.  The landlady cut back the sprinklers a lot and I didn't notice for a while, so I've had a few issues from that.  The buttercup squash vine that attacked the tomato trellis suddenly got too heavy and yanked a bunch of tomatoes down, so things don't look very orderly right now.  In fact it looks pretty messy. 

All of the squash plants have come down with a case of powdery mildew, so after this picture was taken, I went a little crazy pruning out the affected leaves.  In thanks, the zucchini plant spit out four more squashes.  I thought it had given up, but here it comes again!  Hopefully, the plants can get a little more air circulation in there now.  The neighbor lady said that all of her squash got it too and then she shared some of her pear tomatoes with me.

The tomatoes just keep coming, and I love it.  It's kind of funny to have so many, since I'm really the only tomato lover in the house.  My husband did help me clean up two big bowls of fresh salsa though.  I forgot to buy more corn chips at the store, or I would probably be having salsa for lunch again today.

The regular cucumbers have been a disappointment.  Two strangely shaped cukes is all I got from those two plants.  I have harvested several lemon cucumbers and those plants seem to be making some more.  The beans are done.  They won't forgive my not noticing the water situation, but a neighbor says that she has some for me.

My counter is covered with tomatoes and I have a few summer squash sitting in the fridge, waiting for me to get more inspiration on how to prepare them.  And that's my August garden update.  I'm waiting for the weather to cool a bit so I can try again for peas and spinach in the fall.  I love how this hot weather makes those tomatoes turn red, but I'm about ready for some crisp days to come along.

It can't be August already!

Did you know it's August already?  It kind of snuck up on me.  Now school's right around the corner and we still haven't even scratched the surface of all the things we were going to do with the kids this summer.  We started out with such a good schedule, but inevitably chaos overcame my best of intentions.  Now, we sleep in as long as the baby will let us, eat a late breakfast, try to clean some area of the house (to the harmony of two whining children), eat a little lunch and kick the kids out of the house so I don't lose my sanity.  Then I track them down for a late supper and send them to bed with nasty threats of big spankings if they don't settle down and go to sleep.  Yep, that's my day in a nutshell.

Of course, there are family reunions and last minute get togethers peppered in there, so we are in a constant state of either packing or unpacking, with loads of laundry on both sides.  Oh, and the A/C quit in our van, so we're stuffing ourselves into the little Mazda to get from here to there and back again.  Then I get involved in three projects all at once and the whole house seems to fall apart... and the next thing I know, it's August already! 

I enjoyed my first red tomato last weekend.  It was a tiny little thing from the Stupice tomato plant.  I would have had a few more by now, but the baby decided to pick all the pinkish tomatoes from one plant.  They did ripen up, but they just didn't look that great after being played with by an 18 month old.  Little stinker.  The other tomatoes are slowly, but surely turning red and making me very happy.

That's about all the news from our corner of the world, except that the little man caught his first fish.  Much excitement around that event.  And at least one thing accomplished off of that long list of summer activities. 

I'm off to get working on one of those projects.  Hopefully I'll come up to the surface before September!

Food from the garden and bugs

While we would still probably starve if we were depending on the garden, we finally harvested some actual food this week!  Other than the many salads we've harvested, we have now enjoyed two zucchini, two one ball squash, 16 green beans and five little strawberries.  The strawberries were a fun surprise.  I had forgotten about them completely.  I was walking into the house with a squash when I noticed some red in that pot.  We enjoyed them on our ice cream after dinner.

 There is a lemon cucumber almost ready and one little tomato that is turning red.

 That one is on the heirloom plant called Stupice.  It beat the early girl plants by a long way and they had a huge head start.  I would write this down in my garden journal, but I can't find it.  If you could see my desk, you would know why.  My desk looks like this because I have an 18 month old monster that can now reach on top of tables and desks, pulling anything and everything down onto her silly little head.  So we've had a few desk avalanches and the result is not pretty. 

For fun and because I had a packet for some reason, I planted buttercup squash.  I know nothing about them except that the seed packet said to let them climb up a tomato trellis.  They are up and out of the tomato trellis and fighting the tomatoes for their trellis.  Those vines crack me up, how they twist around anything and coil up so tight. 

The one ball squash are making a comeback.  This one will be ready to eat in the next few days.  These squash seem to be attacking the tomatoes too.  Instead of hanging out from the garden box like I thought they would, they are leaning back into the tomatoes and making quite a jungle.  Their prickly leaves have helped keep the little monster from getting too friendly, so I guess the jungle is a good thing.

 Here's that buttercup squash that is trying to take over the world.  You can't see the cucumbers next to them.  The bees have really loved these flowers, so maybe I have this plant to thank for my one ball and zucchini finally coming around.

 My neighbor found a horn worm on one of her tomatoes, so we're now on high alert.  I informed my kids that I will pay a penny for every caterpillar and grasshopper that they kill and bring to me.  That resulted in a bull-like six year old tearing through my plants and breaking a few things.  Maybe I'll take the horn worms over the six year old...

 I did find a grasshopper tonight and I squished it with my bare hands.  It was gross, but I didn't want it to get away.  I have given my son two chances to catch grasshoppers I found and he's 0 for 2, so I did it myself.  And then I found two earwigs hanging out on my lemon cucumber plant.  Even though I hate them with all my being, they are way too creepy to squish with my bare hands.  I moved one to the sidewalk, where I stepped on him and the other one got away.  Yuck.  Earwigs give me the shivers.

We are having a problem with the sprinklers.  These big beautiful blossoms catch so much water and then can't be pollinated.  I went out this morning to drain the blossoms and found a dead bee in one.  I need those bees, darn it!  We don't have control over the sprinklers, but we did try to figure out how to change the schedule.  The little timer thing says they are all off, so that's a little confusing.  I'll keep my husband on that one.  Maybe if we get the sprinklers to come on earlier, the blossoms won't be open yet.  Worth a try, I guess.

I'm linking up with the barn hop!

The view from my window

I think I've mentioned before that I live in a basement, without many windows.  The one big window we have is in my bedroom and it looks out to the patio in back.  This morning, as I was trying to wake up fully, my husband zipped open the blinds and, um, blinded me.  As soon as my eyes adjusted, this is what I saw.  I had to go outside for a picture, what with the screen and window being in the way.

I've decided I like pole beans, even though these ones haven't even put out a single blossom.  I like how the leaves are heart shaped and fill the space.  I like how daring the vine is, seeking out for something to climb and how it twists around things so quickly.  I've tried pole beans before, but didn't have any success.  Actually, the twigs I put in the ground for them to climb did better than the beans did. 

In other areas of the garden, there is one zucchini almost ready to pick and a one ball squash that is getting close.  Now I've got to decide what I'm going to fix with our first zucchini.  Should I fry it as a side dish?  Chop it into a casserole?  Mix up a pasta salad?  Maybe grill it next to some burgers?  I know I'll have plenty of opportunities to do all of the above many times over in the next month, but what to do right now? 

I've been discouraged by the summer squash this year.  The plants are big and healthy and there are plenty of blossoms, but the fruit are not growing.  They just rot right there on the vine.  We should have had at least ten of the one ball squash by now, but we're finally getting one.  I've been taking matters into my own hands lately, carrying a paintbrush out with me to make sure those flowers get a chance to produce.  It's a good thing we aren't dependent on our garden to feed us, because the lettuce is giving up, only one pea plant survived, and the radishes and turnips didn't do well at all.  I'm hoping all those green tomatoes will ripen someday soon.  I'm getting anxious for a tomato!

Garden update

It's hard to believe that just a month ago, the garden looked like this.

This is how it looked a week ago.

And here it is today!

It's turning it to a jungle!  I think I need to prune the tomatoes a bit.  Any advice on that?  Is it okay to cut off that first big leafy shoot that doesn't produce any flowers, or is that a bad idea.  I seem to remember reading about that once.  I've also heard that you should prune indeterminates to just two main shoots, but I haven't done that yet.  The summer squash are blooming, as are the lemon cucumbers.  I'm finding that it's hard to get a good picture of anything with them all packed in there like this.  They seemed so spread out a month ago.

I can't wait to get more than salad out of here.  I see lots of little green tomatoes and little baby squash.  One thing for sure, gardening tries to teach patience!

Problems, cilantro and egg shells

I took a little trip to do some cowboying and I completely forgot to take any pictures of my cute cowboy kids.  I so fail as a mother.  Never have the camera when I need it.  Every time I leave the computer for a few days, it seems to take me forever to get caught up and back into the swing of things.  I had to laugh as I was catching up at all the posts that seemed to fit me just right.

Nancy, at A Rural Journal posted this a day or two ago:

The problem is not that there are problems.  

The problem is expecting otherwise 
and thinking that having problems is a problem.  

~Theodore Rubin~

Funny how perfectly that fit me, as I was feeling sorry for myself and all my problems.  Funny also that everywhere I look on my blog reading list, people are posting about enjoying what is around us and not worrying about tomorrow.  It's like everyone knows what is going on in my life and they are writing their thoughts and advice for me.  Maybe we're all connected on a subconscious level.  Maybe I'm reading way too much into this.  Maybe I should get to the point.

My point is, work interferes with life.  And it seems to be especially irritating right now.

Were it not for work, my husband could actually enjoy a campout with the little man this weekend.  We could plan that trip to Washington and go see Les Miserables in Seattle in August.  The up side to work is the money, I guess.  I do like to have a roof over my head and without that money, rent wouldn't be paid and I wouldn't even have a car to live in because money pays for that too.  Of course, the car isn't running right now, which calls for even more money, which means even more work.  That also causes us to apply for even more jobs and then wait to see if we even get a call.  Yep, work totally interferes with my life.

To distract myself from all those depressing work/money thoughts, I headed out to the garden.  It's doing well, despite me and my monster and the crazy weather.  Yesterday, as I was on my way to the grocery store to spend money, it started to rain.  No problem there, we're used to rain this year.  Then, it started to hail and I realized that my poor plants were out there getting their heads banged around, so around I turned and headed back home to cover them up.  Of course, by the time I actually pulled into the driveway, the storm had passed but I covered them anyway just to be on the safe side.  I think most everything is okay.  There are a few sad looking squash plants, but all in all, it's good.
 

I added some trellises for the tomatoes.  These babies are made from pvc pipe from our sad hoop house of last year.  I strung a few little ropes to secure them and I'll be adding more as I go.  This is just for starters.

While out, I harvested most of the cilantro.  It all seems to be wanting to go to seed, and I don't want it to, so I clipped it off.  I'm trying a new way to preserve my cilantro this year.  In the past I have dried it, which makes it taste a lot like parsley.  Once, I forgot that it was still in the oven and burned it pretty badly.  Burning cilantro really stinks.  I have also chopped it and put it into ice cube trays, topping with water.  The cilantro floated to the top and made a huge mess.  I wasn't too happy with those.  This year, I'm borrowing a page from Thy Hand Hath Provided's book.  I'm making a kind of sauce with garlic, lemon juice, salt and olive oil.  Then I poured it into the ice cube trays and froze it.  I haven't tried it yet, but it already looks better than anything I've tried before.

I also transplanted a little tomato plant.  This picture doesn't really show it, but it was the same size as the one in the back of the picture when I planted them both.  It just isn't getting enough sunshine, so I moved it out here.  You can also see the marigold that my son gave me for Mother's Day.  It has been pulled out of the dirt twice and picked more than once by the monster.  In fact, right after I took this picture, she attacked the blossom and half of it's petals are on the ground now. 

Here's some of the patio plants, with another mystery plant in front.  It seemed to know what it was doing when I weeded, so I left it alone and now it's huge!  Then there's onions and carrots and turnips way down there.

To finish up my little outdoor excursion, I noticed some blue, hatched and dropped egg shells.  I'm always amazed at that color.  Why do robins lay blue eggs?  They aren't blue.  They're pretty plain, really.  Is this how they express themselves?

Well, off to check the wanted ads... :)

Unveiling of the Garden!

It seems that our night time temperatures are finally warming up, and we've had a few days that are down-right hot. (followed by a few days that are down-right cold)  Since the weather seems to approve, generally, I thought it was time to pull the protective covers off of my dear plants.  I'm a little worried though.  We'll be heading out of town for a few days and it looks like some storms will be coming through while we're gone. 

Here's the before picture, or as I like to call it, the trash heap garden:

And here's the after picture:

Here's a shot of my daughter's radishes, as well as a little fence to keep the monster's hands out.  For some reason, this is her favorite spot to piggle in the dirt.  You can kind of see the bean sprouts in the background, as well as my mystery plant that is, in fact, a hosta.  A rather large one, I might add.  Four others have popped up around the patio and they are very welcome.

And here's the pots by the driveway.  There used to be a cucumber in the pot on the right, but apparently it preferred to not live with me and died.  I've never had a lot of luck with cucumbers.

I did have a very cute diagram drawn up, but then I didn't follow it exactly, so it's pretty much obsolete.  So, here is a diagram of the garden.  It may not be pretty, but it's accurate.

How is your garden coming?

Tomato Crazy

On Saturday, I took the kids to the local farmer's market.  It looked like rain, but I was surprised at the number of people there.  Even though it's fun to just get out of the house and see some new things, I really wanted to find a few plants.  I've been very pleased with the variety of seedlings available at the market.  I usually have to start my own plants since Wyoming is a tricky climate and not everything offered at the big store will actually grow, but I have been able to find many of the plants I would have liked to grow.  Plus some.  It's fun to be able to try many different varieties in one year.  I usually limit myself to one new variety of plant per year, since I have left over seeds from previous years, but as I tallied in my mind today, I realized I have seven varieties of tomatoes! 

Flowers on the Silvery Fir Tree!

Of course, I spent as much on one or two plants as a seed packet would have cost me, but this way I'm not stuck with 50 seeds of something I don't really like.  I got to pick only the varieties that interest me and if I like them, they are heirloom plants so I'll learn how to save seeds.  Then I can try seven more varieties next year!  Too bad my husband doesn't like tomatoes.  He may not have a choice this year.


I decided I had better make a little journal of all the varieties and how they perform, so I sat right down and scribbled out the names, when I transplanted, where they came from and how big they were when I transplanted.  I figured it wasn't totally fair to compare dates of ripe tomatoes if one plant was 10" and the other only 3" when they were stuck into the ground. 

I like how the camera focused on the little stem hairs instead of the flower.

Even though I'm now in a warmer climate, I'm trying out varieties that are supposed to do well in colder environments or that mature quickly.  Mostly.  I do have two brandy wine plants and I'm excited to see how they turn out.  I picked the cold- tolerant plants because I want to try them to see if they are worth the effort.  I have grown some tomatoes in Wyoming, but they weren't very good to eat.  I'm hoping to figure out which plant is the absolute best tasting/ highest producing/ toughest and then I'll plant one for my mom in Wyo and see how it does.  In any case, we'll hopefully end up with a wide variety of seeds to try out when I move back home.

And speaking of tomatoes, have you seen this website?  Tomatofest.com has 600 varieties of heirloom tomatoes!  I just went through several pages of tomatoes that they suggest for colder areas.  Where have these people been all my life?

My list of tomatoes is as follows:
Early Girl - not heirloom, but they were cheap.  They looked pretty rough at first, but are coming along nicely.
Brandywine - free from IFA and also doing wonderfully.
Tigerella - this one was little, but is coming along.  This is supposed to be very productive and vigorous, plus it has stripes.
Silvery Fir Tree - this one is fast and only grows 2' tall.  I put it in a pot by the driveway.
Bison -   This was a find at the market.  It is supposed to do well in cold, wet climates.  It was very small also, but I have high hopes for this one.
Stupice - My last tomato for the year.  Really.  I picked this one up at the market Saturday.  The lady swears it produces like crazy.
and some cherry tomato that I had old seeds for.  I've never had success with it, but since I had the seeds, I planted them.  It's still teensy tiny. 

Lest you think I am completely obsessed with tomatoes, I'll have you know that I also bought two lemon cucumber starts.  I heard about them from Backyard Farming and hoped to find them at the market.  Saturday was my lucky day.

Next week: sweet peppers!

Heebie Jeebies

What a lovely day!  The rain has tapered off a bit and the sun has shined long enough for us to get out and enjoy it.  I had to rescue some marigolds that were floating in a tray on the patio... lots of moisture for us, but not as much as some people.  It sure has been good for my transplanted lettuce.  They have enjoyed the moisture and cooler weather.  In fact, I think some plants are almost big enough to sacrifice a few outer leaves for a little salad.

The wet weather hit at a good time for me, as I was needing to get some computer and paper work done.  I feel like I've been chained to the desk for the past three days.  I think I'm about finished with it and just in time for the sun to return!  While sitting here this morning though, I heard a strange sound.  At first I thought it was the lady upstairs, but it wasn't.  I kept hearing throughout the morning and attributed it to the vcr, or something else like that, doing some noise, but it wasn't that either.  It is a scritching, scratching, flippy, floppy sound and it's coming from where the chimney is.  We don't have a fireplace in this apartment, but there is a big pipe in the wall where one used to be.  It's all stuffed with insulation now, and with the tv moved in front of it, I forget that it's there.  Until today.

There is a little door thingy outside on the chimney, I assume for cleaning purposes.  I have had to shoo children away from there because there was a wasps nest in there at one time, and it just doesn't seem like a good thing to play with.  When I heard those noises, I immediately figured that there were two children that were going to get a talking to... leaving that door open for animals to get into...  Only, the door is closed.  I checked.  So, I'm guessing either some bird built a nest down there and the eggs hatched today, or some animal has fallen in there and is making a big ruckus.  I don't know which.  I'm not about to pull that insulation out to see either.  Wanna know why?

First of all, I've been hearing that flip-flop, scritch-scratch, and maybe a squeak as well, all day long.  When I hear such sounds, my body immediately tenses up and I picture bats, and then my skin starts to crawl.  Every once in a while, a bat would get into the house when I was a girl, and I'm still traumatized by it. *shudder* 
Secondly, the thought of touching that insulation makes me itch all over.
And finally, the idea of pulling out that insulation and having some Thing come flopping, flapping, scratching, squeaking, into my living room, where there are a thousand objects all over the floor for some Thing to scurry under/on/over just gives me the heebie jeebies.  *another shudder* 

And the husband isn't home to bravely face it either, so it's just me and the baby right now, left to deal with it.  To deal with it, I'm going to go open the little outside door, in hopes that it actually connects and whatever is in there can get itself out.  Then I'm going to turn on some loud music to drown out the sounds.  I will also periodically walk over to the pipe and peek at it, making sure that nothing is coming through that insulation.  But mostly, I will be here, on the other side of the living room, facing that wall with a broom in my hand, just in case.

Or... I will go outside.  That's what I chose.  I actually accomplished a few things that I've been putting off, like planting the winter sown carrots that have been waiting on me and I planted two marigolds.  Then I went ahead and transplanted a summer squash into a bigger pot.  A larger version of the t.p. roll.  Those roots grow through the cardboard fast.  I think I will give this squash to my sister, or maybe my mom, whichever seems more excited, I suppose. 

Unfortunately, I have to come back in to fix some dinner and the sound is still there and the skin is still crawling.  Excuse me, I'm off to turn up the music.

Transplanting day!

 It was planting day! My goal for the day was to get everything transplanted that was sitting in a small pot or t.p. roll.  It took a lot longer than I thought it would.  The cucumbers and squash went fast, but dealing with all those tiny lettuce, spinach, mustard greens and cilantro took forever. 

 Don't they look excited?  They are finally going home and they are going to grow and give me some good stuff.

 Here's the little squash that I transplanted a few days ago.  It doesn't look as bright eyed and bushy tailed as the others, but it has survived a very frosty few days without any damage.  I notice the weeds enjoy the environment inside the wall o water as well.

 Purple pansies just seem so cheerful, don't they?  They are finally all in their homes, spread throughout the garden areas.  They bring some needed color to the boring dirt.

 The mystery plant, starting to really grow.

 Here's one of the garden beds with a squash, some lettuce and some mustard greens along the edge.  I hate taking pictures at this point because there really isn't much to look at, but I like to compare later and see just how far the plants have come.
My neighbor calculated that we should be getting the early tomato varieties by mid June.  I can't wait!  The garden should be nicely filled out by then I hope.

In the course of the day, the monster baby has pulled up three pansies, smashed two tomato plants, eaten dirt, carried off my tools, put dirt in the watering can and had a wonderful time doing it.  Little stinker.  She had a bath this morning and now she has dirt in her ears.  Again.












 


 Here's me in my goofy garden hat.  My mom gave it to me for my birthday so I won't get my nose sunburned like usual.