My Bounty

The summer is winding down and soon some of my plants will no longer produce veggies/fruit.  It has been a great learning experience and something I plan to continue doing.  I will start researching to see what types of veggies I can grow during the fall season.  In the meantime I have many of my plants with fruit and vegetables ready for picking so that's what I did this morning.  My veggies are not the biggest but the fact that I grew them makes them so very special.  Take a look at the plate of fruit and veggies that I picked today and see how many you can identify.

For tonight's dinner I will be using 4 of the items in this picture.

A Sad Day in the Garden ):

So yesterday morning I was doing my usual inspection of my garden and felt particularly proud of my cucumbers that were starting to develop. Now last week I noticed this ugly white powder was all over the leaves of the cucumber plant. I recognized it as being a mildewy fungus like the variety that had attacked the zucchini plant about a month ago. I went and purchased a bottle of plant fungus killer and applied it on the cucumber plant. Although it left ugly stains on the leaves, all seemed well and hopefully it was doing its job. Now back to yesterday, I was so excited to see one of the cucumbers that was aprrox 2 1/2 inches long. It was really cute and prickly which I did not know about young cucumbers. Here's a picture I took of it.

 Shortly after taking this picture I decided to do some grooming and remove some of the dead leaves and a few of the ones with a lot of the powder still on them. To my astonishment a couple of hours later when I looked out my kitchen window, the branch with this lovely cucumber had wilted like you would not believe! What happened in that short period of time that traumatized the plant, I have no idea. Look at it now, just a day later.

I've gone online to do some investigation and one thing that I've learned is that I should not be wetting the leaves of my plants when watering.  This increases the chances of diseases developing on the plants. As I have said in the past, this is a learning experience for me. I enjoy challenging myself and will not give up. Next years crop will be bigger and better. 

Fresh Strawberries for Lunch

After eating my lunch I looked out my kitchen window and noticed the vibrant red strawberries in my garden and decided to go grab a handful to top off my lunch. Although they are a bit on the small side, they were still quite yummy. Did you know just how beneficial these little gems are?

* One cup contains 13% of the recommended daily requirement of dietary fiber at only 43 calories.

* They help lower blood pressure.

* Curbs over eating.

* Phenols in strawberries fight against many inflammatory disorders such as osteoarthritis and asthma.

* Research has shown that 3 or more servings per day can decrease the possibility of contracting age-related macular degneration by over 1/3rd.

* One cup of strawberries contains an incredible 136% of the RDA of Vitamin C.

* One cup contains 21% of manganese, an essential nutrient that acts as a powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent.

So, have I convinced you to add more of these delicious little berries into your diet! :)

A Visit to Daddy's Garden

A few weeks ago I went to visit my dad and I was amazed when he showed me a couple of zucchinis from his garden. The largest was at least two and a half times the size of the ones from my garden. I asked him to take me out to his garden so I could look around, take notes and compare to mine. What I learned that day was the significance of plenty of soil along with plenty of direct sunlight. He had one zucchini plant that was probably 4 to 5 times the size of my potted zucchini plant and had produced so many vegetables to where he was calling people to give them away. I am not discouraged knowing that I don’t have any open space to put my plants directly into the ground. What I will do in preparation for next season is invest in a few really, really large deep planters to make sure my plants have plenty of soil. This is my first gardening experience and I really get a kick out of going into my garden, picking some fresh tomatoes for a salad, picking zucchini and then a short time later watching my family enjoy it on our dinner table. I have learned about the health benefits fresh mint has for the digestive tract so I go out daily and pick a few sprigs for my water or tea. Gardening is time and labor intensive but when I’m in my garden looking at little flowers on vines one week and then a few weeks later watch as these flowers turn into beautiful vegetables, I just sit there and think, how could someone not believe in God when you look at the intricate detail involved in the creation of food for our bodies.

The smallest one is about the size of the zucchinis from my garden.
 It's hard to tell on this picture but the largest one is huge!

Another visitor to my Garden

Last week my friend, Paula Bass stopped by to visit my garden and get some samples.  :) I was happy to share with her some green tomatoes, oranges and mint. She gave me a good tip on making mint tea. Usually I take a few fresh leaves and add them to my tea. What she does is boil the leaves. So, I like this idea because I like the idea of mint being beneficial to the digestive system. So, I tried it last night and it was very refreshing. I plan to have this on a daily basis in the evening before bedtime. Hopefully it will help my digestive system.

I was a bit disappointed because I was not able to share any zucchini. (As you may remember from my earlier posts this is a learning experience for me. Although I grew up watching my dad grow gardens, I never understood all that it takes to make a successful garden.) I've noticed that my zucchini plants have stopped producing and in my reading and speaking to my dad, I should be getting so many zucchini's that I have to give them away! Next planting season, I will use much larger planters because I didn't consider how large these plants get. I have them in very shallow containers; maybe 6 - 8 inches deep. I also noticed the leaves had a lot of white spots on them, I assumed that it was the oil used in the organic pesticide I made. Later I learned that it is a fungus which I should've treated immediately or it could kill the plant. :(

Well, with the few zucchinis that I was able to pick and a few given to me by my dad, I made some really good dishes. Hopefully my plants will produce more because these are some really tasty, low calorie/low fat ways to prepare zucchini. Here are a few pictures of the dishes I've made.

Recipes for these and other great Weight Watchers friendly, delicious dishes may be found
at Gina's Skinny Taste

Organic containers - good or bad idea?

So when I went to the local nurseries at Lowe's and Home Depot I noticed a new trend in the garden department. Some companies have decided to help with the Go Green campaign by getting rid of the plastic pots/containers that you purchase your plants in and opting to contain them in a peat moss type of container with just a thin plastic wrapping over it. When you get the plants home and are ready to plant them, you only are supposed to take off that plastic wrapping and plant the biodegradable container into the ground. Great idea huh? Eventually the container decomposes and you get the beautiful plants/crops that you want and every thing is grand, right? Well, not so fast :)  I noticed that the zucchini plant that I purchased in one of the biodegradable containers was much smaller than the zucchini plants that I grew from seeds! I purchased the fully developed plant weeks before planting the seeds, yet I have been able to pick a few zucchini from the plants that started from seeds and I'm still waiting for the zucchini on the other on to finish developing. Take a look at the plants and you can see the difference in their sizes.

Plant w/ peat moss container. 

Large zucchini ready to be picked.

Plant started from seeds.

I have a couple of eggplants that came in the biodegradable containers and they are not really thriving so I decided to dig one of them up, remove the biodegradable container and then replant it. What I found out was that the container appeared to be restricting the growth and spread of the roots. And it did not appear to be decomposing very quickly at all. What I decided I would do next time is to remove the peat moss container, tear it into small pieces, place into the soil where the hole is for the new plant and then add the plant.

This is the peat moss container.

Last thing, I saw two blooms on the strawberry plant! Woohoo! My family loves strawberries! There's hardly ever a day that goes by that one of us is not blending up a nice refreshing, healthy smoothie which usually will have some strawberries along with other fruits in it.

Yum yum! Fried Green Tomatoes

Left: Fried Green Tomatoes   |  Right: Grilled zucchini and onions

So I figured that after spending a few days admiring my beautiful two zucchinis, it was now time to cook them. Also, I have quite a few green tomatoes on the vines so I decided to cook some fried green tomatoes and grilled zucchini this evening. I love both of these dishes and they were especially scrumptious knowing that I grew them. I know, I know .... fried green tomatoes may be a little on the fattening side, but to my credit I did coat them with whole wheat flour and cooked them in olive oil. :)