More Gardening

Today we spent some time outside with our garden.  We did some harvesting and more planting.  Scott also weeded, hoed and mulched around several of our plants.  It is so nice to be growing our own produce.  

Our lettuce has done very well.  We harvested quite a bit today and we still have tons.  Our chard is coming right along as well.  Swiss Chard is so beautiful.  Despite the clay-like soil, downpours, and several low temperatures last month, our various tomato and pepper plants are doing just fine.  

Scott planted more tomato plants and zucchini seeds today.  I have a great zucchini bread recipe that we hope to use a lot this summer.  My mother-in-law gave me a great tomato sauce recipe years ago.  I am hoping that the 15 tomato plants will yield enough to make several containers full to store away.  Hey, maybe that could be my next canning project.  :)  Yes, I did say 15 tomato plants.  

 I'll go ahead and share the pictures with you.  I could go on and on about the hopefulness of gardening and such.

This was before we started working in the garden today, but you can get a glimpse of the layout.

Scott and I spotted this little ladybug friend that was on a leaf of Romaine lettuce.

Madelyn bought some Petunias at the farmer's market this morning.  We had a good time planting them.

This is our first tomato.  This is off an Early Girl tomato plant.

This is a picture of my little experimental planting.  I planted two rows of Bush Beans.  This is not a part of the big garden.  Scott tilled up a bit of space just under and to the side of our deck.  Most of the seeds have sprouted and turned into cute little plants.  We shall see how they do. 

This is our pumpkin.  Yes, we have a huge pumpkin plant that took root in our compost.  After we threw our pumpkin seeds out last fall they were thrown in with the compost.  With time, they started to take root and grow.  Talk about rich soil!  Gotta love compost, even if it is kind of gross.  It is so natural, free, and rich.

This is a cucumber mound.  We hope to make more pickles this summer.  

This is some of our homegrown Collard Greens.  I cut them up and cooked them in my wok with olive oil, garlic, pepper, Earth Balance, cilantro and a tiny bit of Soy Sauce.  We ate them with mashed potatoes, black-eyed peas, cauliflower, and bread tonight.