It's Salsa Time!

I still think it is pretty dern awesome that whenever I am in the mood for salsa, I can walk out back and come in with a bowl that looks like this:

 and end up with something that looks like this:



Yum!  I actually had to add a few more ingredients to my bowl 'o goodies up there.  Thanks to our tomatoes not really wanting to produce this year.  But thank goodness for Aunt's that grow an abundance but do not eat them.  Because then I get this:

She gave me this lovely little bag of tomatoes and two more boxes.  Whew - we definitely shouldn't run out of tomato juice or salsa this winter.  Welll tomato juice anyway, salsa seems to disappear as soon as I make it.  Let's see if any of it actually gets stored away.

I also had to go get cilantro from the store.  This makes me very sad because once you have had fresh cilantro, everything else just tastes kinda bland.  But the salsa is yummy and a nice way to end the day.

Gifts From a Not So Great Garden

Our garden was incredibly sad this year. INCREDIBLY!  From seeds not sprouting, to not enough rain, to deer and raccoon, to lack of attention, and on and on.  Anyway. . . Incredibly. Sad. Garden.  The good news is, we are getting some gifts from said garden, I suppose it is trying to redeem itself, or beg us to not give up on it.

One of the things I really wanted from the garden this year was for all of my salsa fixin's to be ready at the same time.  Jalapeños are doing awesome, green onions this year are doing spectacular, but tomatoes and cilantro - not so much.  Cilantro is one of the items that I kept re-planting and it just would not sprout.  After about three or four rounds of planting and waiting I got maybe 5 or 6 plants.  So I used some and I just let some go.  Now, I am just waiting on the coriander to be ready, then I can use some of that and keep the seeds for next year and through the winter.  A little gift from the garden.


Cilantro blossoms.

Cilantro Seeds/Coriander

The bumble bees are loving the flowers right now.

Another gift from the garden is the one thing I could not find this year.  Tomatillos.  J. loves his green salsa.  Last year we had a bumper crop of them.  This year I was never at the right nursery at the right time.  But leave the garden alone for a week or two and it gives you a lovely little present wrapped in green crepe paper!


Tomatillo

Green Onions!

It is also giving us lovely little things to look at.  Like grape vines that look like little green snakes.

I know I am so far behind.  I promise I will catch up.  School is starting soon so life will slow down a tiny notch or two for me.  Stay tuned for what we have been busy with this past month!

Another Garden Update

I know, I know, enough with the garden already right!?!  Sorry, can't help it.  I am so excited that we are getting more and more veggies, not from the store but from our own garden.  It is pretty awesome to tell one of the kids:  "I need one more jalapeño, can you run out and pick me one".  Yep, pretty awesome.

So a couple of weeks ago while we were out garden Cameron was so excited to find this little guy he called me over to snap a picture of it.

Cute little baby cucumber

Yesterday, as in two weeks later, I went out and got this big ol' guy:

Probably not the same one but all of them two weeks ago were about the size as that little guy up there.  Hopefully the plants bounce back after the deer attack and we keep on getting these.  I wanted to make pickles.

Yesterday I also went out and picked all the green beans that were ready.  Whew, not a fun job really.  It started out fun but after a while as you keep looking down the row and it doesn't seem to be getting much shorter to the end, not so much fun anymore.  And the green beans were not doing so well early on so we planted two more rows of them.  Yep, two whole rows more full of green beans.  Green beans anyone?  Cause I am sure we will have plenty.  Just what I picked yesterday was two quarts full.

They sure are yummy though.  I forgot to take a picture before I started snapping off the ends.  Apologies.  Next time, or the next time, or the next time. . .  because I have a feeling by the time this summer is over I am going to be very, very tired of picking green beans.

This however, I will not ever be tired of picking:

I decided I probably better hurry and just pick all of this before it went bad or went to seed.  So delicious.  I headed out the front door pretty early and forgot that the front door opens from the inside even though it is locked.  grrrrr so frustrating.  So when I was all done and headed back to the house I had to ring the doorbell for the boys.  Jake yanked it open to complain that I should have remembered to unlock it and stopped mid word because the smell of the cilantro finally caught up to him.  He stood there sniffing loudly and said "Oh man, that smells so good it almost makes my nose hurt!"  So cute.  And I totally agree.

The tomato plants are finally getting some pretty good size tomatoes on them.  Can't wait till all of them are ripe and we can really get busy with salsa, and tomato sauce, and tomato juice, and. . . and. . . and oh yea - eat them!  Can't wait.



Beefsteak Tomatoes

And my green onions are doing OK.  Not great, I am really disappointed.  Do you know how many green onions I buy on a weekly basis?  Really, it's ridiculous.  But they are so yummy.  So, I am going to have to figure out what to do different next year.  In the meantime I think they are the most guarded row in the whole garden.

And lastely, radishes.  We have so, so many radishes.  Dad is mostly the only one who eats them.  I slice them up in salads, Cameron is starting to eat more of them and the boys from time to time will eat one. But really, what do you do with radishes.  So I googled yesterday and may try sauteying them and see how that turns out.  I picked some more of those yesterday.  This second batch is not doing nearly as good as the first batch.  They are in a different spot so maybe soil 20 feet away is not as good, who knows.  But I had to share our mutant crop with you all.

So there it is, yet another post about the garden from us here in Michigan.  We are like kids in a candy store.  You would think no one on earth ever had a garden the way we are all amazed every time we pull something out of the ground.  I just wish somehow we could send smells through this thing we call the internet.  Because really, WOW!

Garden Update

Busy time is about to begin.  We finally finished with the mountains of strawberries, only to hear Dad say - let's go buy two more flats.  Sheesh!  But I found new recipes for jam so some will be put to yummy use and the rest will be - yep, you guessed it - frozen.

The garden is doing great.  Everything is coming up nicely.  It's so nice to go out there and see new little sprouts of this and that.  I can't wait until we can pick more of it.

Little Lady C checking things out.  The empty row there is where all the radishes have already been harvested.  We have another row coming up off to the left near the back and may plant another row here pretty soon.

Corn and potatoes.  Garlic is also growing way off to the right over there along with a few sunflowers.

The potatoes are starting to flower.  Good sign.  This is when they really start to plump up.  Waiting is so hard.  These are the russet potatoes.  The red potatoes should get a pinkish flower.

The tomatillos are doing great.  We have lots and lots of these little buggers popping out everywhere.  The jalapeño's are also doing great.  We have already gotten 5 or 6 spicy little guys off of them and promptly diced them into some salsa.  YUM!  Can't wait 'till the entire bowl of salsa is from our own garden.

And this little basket of loveliness is from the garden and went into our salad tonight.  From left to right it is baby spinach, in the back is buttercrunch lettuce, red leaf lettuce, and finally cilantro.  The cilantro was heavenly.  Cilantro is A. and I's most favorite thing.  When we buy it at the store we smell just about every cluster until we find the one that smells the best.  Not one in all these years has smelled as good as the bunches that we took out of the garden today.  The entire kitchen smelled like cilantro.  Yummy!  We chopped some up into the salad because we couldn't wait to have some.  Definitely puts a different taste in the salad.  So delicious.

Can't wait to harvest the whole garden!