What are you eating from your garden today?

CapeCoddess wrote:SR, you grew those beautiful patty pans???  THEY are GORgeous!  Did you grow hat watermelon, too?

Ate my first tomato of the season tonight - a cherry called "Sweetie".  
CC

Yes, CC, I grew the patty pans, but the watermelon came from Krogers!

CapeCoddess wrote:SR, you grew those beautiful patty pans???  THEY are GORgeous!

+1 - those look fabulous!

Well - we've had so much trouble with the weather this year, between the excessive spring rain and now very high temperatures, that I've been planting "extra" of everything - just to make sure some survive.

I guess cantaloupes REALLY LIKE our odd weather because I've picked six (5-6 pounder's) in the last three days and there are another 15-20 still on the vine ripening.




Our neighbors are loving it!!!

Gloria

Wow, that is some nice cantaloupe.  Wish I had some of those.  Mine are just not in bloom.

GloriaG wrote:Well - we've had so much trouble with the weather this year, between the excessive spring rain and now very high temperatures, that I've been planting "extra" of everything - just to make sure some survive.

I guess cantaloupes REALLY LIKE our odd weather because I've picked six (5-6 pounder's) in the last three days and there are another 15-20 still on the vine ripening.




Our neighbors are loving it!!!

Gloria

Six of them??? I wish I was your neighbor.
CC

Me too! Those can get very expensive around here when you can find them at all. And I love those so much. I can easily eat half of one at a time just by itself, and also like it chopped into salads.

Those melons look so good I can almost smell them!!

Here is what I just came inside with! My first mess of Kentucky Wonder pole beans, a patty pan, some Sungold cherry tomatoes. and some swiss chard! I am going to share with my brother and his family! Off to the Lake!

Looks great, SR!  

CitizenKate wrote:

quiltbea wrote:Hey, Kate, please post your recipe for making those pickles.  I want to be ready when mine start growing.  They are just short vines here in Maine right now.

The only "recipe" I've used for the brine to make dill pickles so far is Ball's kosher dill pickle mix, and I'm pretty happy with it.

I have to retract this.  I just discovered that Ball is no longer carrying this pickle seasoning mix.     Funny young store cashier said, "You may have been the only one buying it."  Nice to feel like the odd one out, but then again, I may have actually chosen that course.

Anyway, back to exploration mode.  I tried some Mrs. Wages Polish Dill mix - wonderful flavor, but mushy pickles.  Evidently that mix is not intended for water bath canning - my bad.  So now I really want to can pickles "from scratch", and have them come out crackling with crispness!

Tonight I've got a batch of pickle cukes soaking in some pickling lime.  And I found what looks like a good recipe for Polish dills.  At least the reviews are glowing.  If they turn out as good as they sound, I'll post the recipe.

CitizenKate wrote:

CitizenKate wrote:

quiltbea wrote:Hey, Kate, please post your recipe for making those pickles.  I want to be ready when mine start growing.  They are just short vines here in Maine right now.

The only "recipe" I've used for the brine to make dill pickles so far is Ball's kosher dill pickle mix, and I'm pretty happy with it.

I have to retract this.  I just discovered that Ball is no longer carrying this pickle seasoning mix.     Funny young store cashier said, "You may have been the only one buying it."  Nice to feel like the odd one out, but then again, I may have actually chosen that course.


Anyway, back to exploration mode.  I tried some Mrs. Wages Polish Dill mix - wonderful flavor, but mushy pickles.  Evidently that mix is not intended for water bath canning - my bad.  So now I really want to can pickles "from scratch", and have them come out crackling with crispness!

Tonight I've got a batch of pickle cukes soaking in some pickling lime.  And I found what looks like a good recipe for Polish dills.  At least the reviews are glowing.  If they turn out as good as they sound, I'll post the recipe.

Wow, Kate I didn't plant any cukes this summer...what cultivars are the best? I think I once planted Burpees burpless? Is that right? It has been since I did the original SFG that I ever did cucumbers.......miss them!

Which ones are the best is a question I am exploring myself.  I am just trying cucumbers for the first time this year.

For my garden this year, I chose Burpee's Picklebush.  It's got a more compact, bushy growing habit that works pretty well in a SFG scenario.  I planted 4 of them, one to a square, in adjacent squares, and that seems to be about the right spacing for them.  They're very trouble-free plants, no problems so far with diseases or pests.  However, the bees LOVE the blossoms on this plant.  So far, I've gotten enough cucumbers to can several small batches of them - 3-4 pints to a batch, and they are very tasty.

I'll grow these again next year, except try to get them started earlier in the growing season.  The heat is slowing them down a bit.  I'll also probably give them some kind of cage or other structure to encourage them to grow more upward, as they do tend to spread out along the ground.

CitizenKate wrote:Which ones are the best is a question I am exploring myself.  I am just trying cucumbers for the first time this year.

For my garden this year, I chose Burpee's Picklebush.  It's got a more compact, bushy growing habit that works pretty well in a SFG scenario.  I planted 4 of them, one to a square, in adjacent squares, and that seems to be about the right spacing for them.  They're very trouble-free plants, no problems so far with diseases or pests.  However, the bees LOVE the blossoms on this plant.  So far, I've gotten enough cucumbers to can several small batches of them - 3-4 pints to a batch, and they are very tasty.

I'll grow these again next year, except try to get them started earlier in the growing season.  The heat is slowing them down a bit.  I'll also probably give them some kind of cage or other structure to encourage them to grow more upward, as they do tend to spread out along the ground.

These Burpees Picklebush cukes sound great. And if the heat slows them down then they'd love my house today - I think we're at a high of 63. I wonder if the Picklebush is powdery mildew resistant? I'll have to look that up because that's been my downfall with cucumbers so I've chosen varieties that are resistant. 
CC

Royal burgundy beans, a few wax beans, and some chocolate cherry tomatoes.

Red okra, those big purple eggplants whose name escapes me, long purple and white eggplant, all the foregoing tossed in parmesan cheese and olive oil and pepper and grilled on the barbee, some aspragus, some lettuce, some mesclun, some chard some kale, some beets (that Susan has pickled), some carrots.

We are eating very well from the garden, sometimes too much to deal with.  

Susan has steamed excess kale for veggies for the dogs.

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And the Yukon Gold look like Yukon black, with Mel's Mix all over them!

Mixture of scarlet emperor runner beans(seeds and pods) and cow peas(seeds only), along with some sausage.  Boiled the beans for five minutes and it seemed they were soft enough.  So then I stirred them into some sausage sauteed in olive oil.  The sausage gave the beans all the flavor boost they might have needed.

Very nice.  I'm surprised the pods held their color so well.  

The sausage is the part I didn't grow.

For lunch out the green house thin sliced tomatoes ...... on top of home made crusty bread rolls smothered in home made two cheese filling mixed with our out the garden fine chopped red onion then mixed in some some  salad cream plus mayo.
All mixed up as a sandwich / roll filling with some super thin shredded ham to finish it off.
Plus an ice cold  bottle of alcohol free beer for me .

 For evening meal we had smoked & plain fish in a puff pastry parcel , accompanied home grown french runner beans , yellow courgette ( new to us this year , they taste much better than any of the dark green ones we've been eating this last 20 years) & some shop brought dutch white ball cabbage .
A home made white parsley ( out the garden ) sauce was poured over the beans and some of the pastry .
T'was a lovely meal indeed.

Yum!

Fortex pole beans with ham hock, silver queen corn, tomatoes and cucs (with a hamburger on the side).

I love Fortex beans!  Unfortunately, many of the seeds I planted this year either didn't germinate, or were devoured by birds.

Kohrabi and Carrots made this way:

Kohlrabi and Carrots Recipe

And the first eggplant - fried like my Mom did.

Still have some left over and will enjoy this for today's lunch.

While picking my first tomatoes I saw that I still had a few green beans trying to grow.  I picked the handful of ready beans and steamed them in the nuker with garlic, dill, and butter.  NUM, NUM!  Great snack!!!