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We are eating like royalty, and very, very local. The chard (some of you call it silverbeet) is gorgeous and tasty, the onions are bulbing nicely, and we picked our first little mess of carrots. Today at lunch we had green beans, onions and potatoes, all together in one pot, and all from our garden. We ate the first zucchini of the season yesterday. The 'good' apricot tree began dropping fruit this week. We have eaten plenty, plus I've put up 3 jars of apricot and 3 apricot-almond jam, I have my 2nd batch of 'cots in the dehydrator, we have a bottle of apricot syrup (I'm thinking cornmeal waffles for that!) and ice cube trays of pulp for smoothies! Our potato plants are gorgeous, and nothing is bothering them (yay!). Well, nothing except me. I side-dug a few tubers for our lunch today, but I'll try to leave the rest of them alone until they are actually ready. (It was totally worth it, though!)

My oldest lettuce is starting to bolt, but fear not! I have baby lettuces filling in quite nicely. I pulled up the peas last week and planted spinach, more chard, more carrots, as well as some late green beans, cabbage and broccoli. It's all sprouting now, so if the blizzards wait until November, I should be able to put up a lot of yummy stuff!

Coming soon...we have wee cucumbers on the vine, and a watermelon the size of a marble! The other melons are blossoming, so they'll be along soon. Yellow squash and patty pans are just starting to blossom, so they should be here in a week or two. The winter squashes are starting to form and the corn is tassling. There are green tomatoes on all the plants. I have San Marzanos that look wonderful, a few roma plants, a jellybean hybrid (Kitteninhat insisted on getting them because they're called 'jelly bean') and, best of all, the Red Currant tomatoes. They are so wee, so sweet, and they are my most favorite of all! Also, the early cabbage is heading, the broccoli is starting to form heads, and the 2nd planting of greenbeans is starting to bloom.

In the 'I'm so disappointed' department, I don't have a pepper plant to my name. It's embarrassing, living in the Southwest, and not being able to grow peppers, but every year, I fail with them. Mleh. Also, I tried blackeye peas this year - got seed from my aunt in KY. They came up fast, but the leaves are wrinkly! Every new leaf that comes on, same thing. I don't remember that from when I was a kid. I wonder if it's the altitude. They are growing, though, so maybe it'll all work out. I hope I don't get wrinkly peas!

So...anyone else here with a garden? How is yours doing?

you put my single punkin vine, fig/meyer lemon/peach/apricot tree and tiny herb garden to shame!!!

Figs? LEMONS? Marry me!!!!!

(Oh, right, we're both already married.... )

Big time envy. It's winter here. My garden is cold and tiny. I'm limited to rabbits ear lettuce, a mix of European and Asian herbs and picking lemons that hang over neighbours fences!

well i do have a prolific meyer lemon tree .... my vege patch is mostly full of chickweed at the mo - but that is edible in salads or smoothies (just need it to stop raining so i can go out and get some)

looking forward to planting a bunch of fruit trees and getting some interesting stuff happening out there soon - spring isn't that far away, right?!!

FQ

Rabbit's Ear lettuce? That sounds so interesting! I get Spring Fever every year, and plant something too early, because I HAVE to.

Send us your rain, Foodqueen....we got less than half an inch in all of July, and today, it got up to 103. Everything is just baked. I learned several years back that in this climate, I have to plant soaker hoses...then set the seeds alongside them.

I'll be picking broccoli and some green beans in the morning...woot! I had a salad at lunch today and my sweet greens are getting a little bitter. They are still at a point where I can pretend I'm eating arugula, but soon they'll be going to the hens. The baby lettuce will be a little while, but I have other stuff for the interim.

So now I have to ask you this year, CIH, how's it going?

We expanded this year: I built a new rock garden infront of the house specifically for herbs: dill, onion chives, garlic chives, cilantro, two parsley plants, lavender (I adore the smell), oregano, garlic, basil. I didn't get to divide my thyme and sage plants before The Man stole them from me and put them in the back garden, but that's okay. I'll leave them alone this year and get them moved next year. I had planted some green onions, but while he was generously weeding....well, let's just say that I have to wait a few more weeks for the second planting to come through for me.

In the raised bed that we built two (maybe three?) years ago, I have one store-bought tomato plant, one beefsteak (out of at least 12 planted) from seed, and about six organic-seed-sourced cherry tomato plants. We have three pepper plants - they might all be Thai peppers, or one might be a sweet, we're not sure which ones survived the frost. Then there's green and yellow beans, snow peas, more garlic, the above mentioned second planting of green (bunching) onions, some zucchini plants, and tucked into each end I have tiger lily bulbs and two soft maple trees that I'm trying to get hardened up for transplanting next year.

We re-did our sad attempt at a back garden; added more (new) soil to the nasty iron-rich sandy/rocky mess we have through most of the property. I've got one pumpkin plant coming up from the handful of seeds I planted, more oregano, the sage and thyme plants that started out in the original raised bed garden, ten asparagus crowns that we just bought this spring and all are looking healthy and happy, although we have to wait another year before sampling them, and we've got to be selective in our 'culling' at that. I bought two blueberry bushes; I've never heard of the variety and couldn't find anything online about them, but I'm really hoping that we get something next year from them. Our strawberry plant gave off a few small fruits this year, but has spread quite a bit, so I've got to get out and get his territory sufficiently expanded. I'm a little worried about our apple trees; the first two years we were here we had heaps, but the past two years haven't been as prolific. Not that we get very big apples from them; the trees desperately need pruning, so I try to get out and nab a few of the branches I can at least reach. I've also been marking the scrub trees that are crowding the apples, and we cut some down every few weeks. Lastly is the plum trees; we have one super healthy one, and two that were run over with teh lawn mower last year, so they will take some time to catch up, and we won't be getting anything off the big one until they do. I love where we live, but wish it was a little surther south so we could have a longer growing season...*sigh* I guess all gardeners dream of having multiple zones in their yards. ;^D