More From the Garden

So it's been a while since I've talked about my garden.  It's looking pretty raggedy these days.  We had two nights that froze about a month or so ago and then two more earlier this week and my green beans and tomato plant didn't like it very much.  They both kept producing, but not as well.  It seemed like it was only the top layers of leaves on the tomato plant that shriveled and turned brown, so I cut those off and then the lower ones started doing it.  So my nice big tomato plant only yielded four tomatoes, and the tops cracked on all of them.  I'm still thrilled that I grew four tomatoes though.

Only three here, one was hiding on my plant.

We ended up with about 20 green beans total from my three grean bean bush plants.  We usually just ate them right when we picked them though.  Since only two or three would be ready at a time, the kids would all be disappointed that they couldn't have a whole one.  What a good problem to have...kids fighting over fresh veggies.  I think the biggest issue with my green bean bush plants is that I planted the broccoli closer to sun (not knowing how HUGE the broccoli plants would get) so the beans were blocked from the sun. 

Speaking of the broccoli, it continues to produce!  A few times, usually after a rain, it'll flower before I cut it off.  The older boys just pick off the flowers and eat the rest that isstill good.  We usually eat it raw, but when I steam it or use it in stir-fry, you can tell a big difference between it and the frozen florets I usually buy. 

The carrots are all still growing but I picked on just to see how big the root was, and it was barely there.  I'll keep them in there, but I'm not expecting big things.  We read that you have to prepare the soil for months before planting the seeds, and we didn't do that.  I got too impatient.  

We're done with radishes for now.  We had SO many and we're not that into them, but it was fun to usually have some to pick whenever we went out there.  I'll grow some more later this spring.

My snap pea plants have gotten good size and they just blossomed so they should be growing the snap peas soon if the freeze didn't affect them too much.  I need to make a bigger trellis for them to grow on when we plant spring veggies.

The brussel sprouts plants got very big and are just now starting to grow brussel sprout shoots.  I'll have to figure out something to do with them.  I'm not sure I've ever eaten a brussel sprout.

And lastly is the cabbage.  I planted four plants and have picked two of them.  One I gave to my dad when he visited for Christmas.  The other I used for dinner the other night. 

I made Runzas.  We had Runza restaurants in Nebraska and it was so yummy.  I made these a couple of years ago when we studied about Russia, but it was fun this time to use cabbage I had grown myself.  They were yummy and most of the kids liked them. 

I did it a bit different than the recipe I found.  I used a tube of croissant dough instead of bread dough so they wouldn't be so bread-y and so they would cook quicker. 

So there is the update on my garden.  I'll go take some pictures to add so it's a little more interesting.  Once the chance of freezing is over, we'll start our spring veggies!  I really like living down here where our growing season is practically year round.