Most useful garden/kitchen tool for this year's growing season

A cheap salad spinner. This handy tool is being used at least once a week to wash and spin my lettuce from the garden.  

A couple of changes for this years Summer garden are: 

Not worrying about companion planting. Using soaker hoses with a timer that waters every morning, early in the morning, 3 AM for 30 minutes for deep soaking and not mulching like last year.

So far this growing season is doing a lot better than last year.

So well in fact that I still have a lot of. Jalapeño peppers still in fridge to use.  

The first of many cucumbers has started to grow.  These are going to be some pretty big cucumbers. 

Here's a view of more cucumber vines, Bibb lettuce, and buckets of herbs (basil, mint, and cilantro). 

The grape vines actually started out great in May but are now beginning to turn their leaves yellow. Not sure what the cause is so will have to do a little research to find out.  On the left side is a tomato cage containing about four cucumber vines.  I have never had vines so long before, so I am looping them up in the cage to try to keep them off the ground away from slugs and other hungry critters.  This past weekend there was a squirrel convention in my backyard. I counted around 10 squirrels in and around my garden.  As son as I would chase some in one direction. Others would flank the garden from the other side.  Cassie was even trying to help me but there were to many for us.  Some of them even started charging us. These squirrels are getting pretty dangerous. I might have to break down and get an airsoft gun to protect my property and my life.  

Get dirty and keep on gardening. 

Fried green tomatoes and jalapeño cheese poppers

It's a frying day at the homestead. Had over a dozen jalapeños from the garden. Filled half with string cheese and the other half with cream cheese. Cream cheese was the winner.  Wrapped the peppers in wanton wrappers to keep everything in.  Used leftover oil to fry up the tomatoes. Thanks to a recent episode of America's Test Kitchen, I saved a step and learned to combine the egg and flour together before dipping them in the cornmeal.  Absolutely yummy!

Get dirty and keep on gardening!

Green variety tomato

So this year like all other years, I experiment with new tomatoes.  This year I found one that stays green, which helps keep the birds and squirrels from eating them. My mistake was that I planted all of them and then forgot which tomato plant was which. This tomato has been growing for some time now and it never hinted at turning red, so I decided to go ahead a pick it today. If anything, I can make some fried green tomatoes.

 It's a little bigger than a baseball.  The grape tomatoes are doing well.  I harvest about 7-10 every other day.  Roasted them and made some fresh salsa with the jalapeños from the garden.  Just wish I had some cilantro. In between two growing cycles. First batch has gone to seed,

second batch was too small

and used up within a week, and the third batch is just starting to sprout.

We love cilantro in this house!!

Reuseing the bucket system with a modification to help keep the mosquito population down. 

Bottom bucket is the reservoir from which the top bucket feeds from.   Things doing well in buckets are spearmint, marigolds, cilantro, basil. Here is a combo bucket containing a tomato plant, cucumber plant, and some marigolds.

Get dirty and keep on gardening!

Guess what's for lunch?

Another yummy salad thanks to the garden.  I had a salad for lunch and dinner yesterday, so I have to start getting creative to change it up. Yesterday I found one little apple in the fridge to add to it along with some grape tomatoes from the garden and today it's red grapes and sun- dried tomatoes. Toss in some feta, sunflower seeds, and a hard boiled egg from my neighbor's backyard chickens and I got a new salad.

Got lots of lettuce still in the garden so I am glad I love salads.  I also have harvested quite a few jalapeño peppers so it looks like some bacon wrapped poppers will be on the menu for this week or next. 

As of today, I have already done better than last summer's garden.  As long as we keep having this nice weather, things will continue to do well. 

Get dirty and keep on gardening!

Beginning of June

Lots of salad greens ready to be harvested. I have Swiss chard up to my knees, Bibb lettuce, black seeded Simpson, and iceberg.

My tomato crop will be a surprise this year as I planted a variety of types and then forgot which was which. I have never found a labeling system that works.  The one problem is that one variety never turns red so. I might be eating a lot of fried green tomatoes. So far though I have been graced with a bowl of grape tomatoes.

Last week I harvested a zucchini squash that was about 8 inches long and roasted it in the oven. Pretty tasty.  

Jalapeño peppers are doing great as well as my spearmint and cilantro.

Get dirty and keep on gardening!