Monday, June 4, 2012

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Watering my gernaium
*Warning: This post contains okra. For those with an okra sensitivity you might want to skip it. You know who you are. ;D

In addition to our garden plot over at our friends' house, we have a modest little container garden on our patio right now.

Young okra plant
Our big vegetable garden hasn't been doing all that well. We think it is a combination of a lot of things--the plot doesn't get as much sun as we'd hoped due to trees surrounding it, the soil is poor quality, it has been really hot and dry and it is on a hill so when we water the water runs down the furrows too quickly instead of sinking into the soil around the plants as it should. Anyway, it's not a total loss yet. The squash plants have died but the watermelon and sweet potatoes seem to be doing really well and we have a couple of cucumbers and tomato plants still alive. I bought some okra plants last week and we decided to try four of them in containers on our patio and we'll put the other two in the garden.

Okra pickles!
Last week at the farmer's market we picked up some okra from a Florida farmer and Saturday my husband helped me pickle it. We tried three different recipes so we can decide which one we like best for when our own okra plants start producing. The hardest part of making the pickles is the waiting--we are supposed to let them cure for two weeks before eating them. We are planning a blind taste test because we are nerds like that. We'll let you know what we decide.

My chrysanthemum has decided to bloom. It doesn't like being left out of all the excitement.

We have a couple of pots of herbs in our container garden as well--dill and mint. It would be nice to add some others to the collection. Maybe some basil, thyme, rosemary and lavender. We'll see.


I love growing season.

1 comment:

Tanya H said...

Your squash *died?! Must be a climate issue or something. I've seen entire gardens freeze or dry up or run into every other problem but the squash always thrives! LOL.
In fact, we've got pumpkin plants growing in our front flower bed becuase that's where my husband tossed them after Halloween last winter, for "compost". we'll see how long I let them go..... :)