How Does Your Garden Grow? {July 25, 2012}

One would think that having a weekly feature on Tuesdays would mean that it arrives on Tuesdays. Apparently this is impossible to do when you spend Monday trying to get an issue out for your online magazine AND spend the rest of the day harvesting and tending to your garden.
WHAT?!? I spent time in the garden?!? What a wild concept.

First things first, I wrote this little diddy up for Bonbon Break about Berry Freezer Jam. Yes, I did have it on here last year, but there is a new twist now since I have learned a bit since I wrote it up last year. So check 'er out. This recipe is so easy, you can make it with your kids and once you try it, you will never buy another jar of jam.

Onward to the garden...

The onions were about to reach out and grab us they were getting so large. As I was reading about onion harvesting, I found that you can really harvest onions anytime from green onions up to the big kahunas. The one recommendation is that you pick them on a hot day so they can be set outside and the roots can dry out in a couple of hours. Do they know where I live? We have had some pretty stormy weeks and I was hoping for "clear" vs. "hot". I found my day and we harvested, but wouldn't you know it, three hours later it started to rain again. So I chopped off the greens and set them in our drying rack . 

Here is Lil Miss with the onion octopus. They really are quite large and I cannot wait to get them on the grill / sautee / stir fry / eat them! These are Walla Wallas and their taste is so mild and sweet. I can already feel all of my onion recipes coming on. Last year, I did an onion recipe roundup and I didn't make it all the way through. There is always this year!

I harvested over 60 onions and I didn't bruise one. Last year, I was a little too rough with them and lost a couple. I am proud to say that none of them were MUSH either. Last year, I waited a little too long to harvest and some of them were mushy...ewwww. 

We also harvested our first zucchini (and 2-5...you know how it is with zucchini!). Of course our first one was the one that looked a little odd. Two-for-one deal? Siamese twins? Genetic anomaly? Whatever it was, we ate it.

A friend has said that I am going to scar my children with all of the zucchini in their life. So be it. There are few things that taste as good as roasted or grilled fresh-from-the-garden zucchini. Yum.

We are reaching the end with our snap peas, which is so sad. Hear Lil Miss point to the garden and say, "Peas! Peas! Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeas!" kind of makes my day. Lately, when the house gets quiet in that scary kind of way, I can look out the window and see my littles foraging for peas. 

Here is the BIG news for the week in my garden besides the fact that we are now eating garlic, onions, zucchini, raspberries and a few peas... I  U N L E A S H E D the garden this week. I couldn't take trying to weed and tend the garden through the chicken wire. It was breaking my little garden spirit down. Deer be damned, my garden is free. It allowed me to notice that the sunflower and corn want to spring up up up and the green beans are using them as trellises...a little experiment I put in place. I hope the corn and sunflowers keep on growing faster than those  beans!

So, there it is...everything is growing and I have a new found love for the color the nasturtiums are bringing to the garden. Love them.

Well....how is YOUR garden growing?!?