The Potager

The Potager
Showing posts with label cucumber. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cucumber. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Trying to fit a day into one morning

Our church has Vacation Bible School this week and I am one of the teachers. This means all this week I leave the house before 9 in the morning and usually get home at 9:30 from VBS.
It's good to be stretched.
I am trying to clean the house, make breakfast, pack lunches, do laundry, pay bills and prep for my husbands dinner before work. Hubs has stepped up to help me with the garden. He is watering it everyday. Being hubs, he made a device that hooks up to the hose enabling him to water the garden without ever going in the garden. I cracked up when I saw this:
He is creative.
I enjoy getting up close and personal with the plants, so I will not be using this when I get back to the garden. If I had been watering I would have noticed that I had plants that needed picking. While taking these shots I saw the cucumbers and then noticed the white scallop squash:
That squash is about 8 inches across - that's a bit large for that squash! I picked three green cucumbers and two white cucumbers.
I made cucumber salad with two of the cukes.
 
I then went back outside to water the hanging plants and patio plants which I realized hubs wasn't watering. In the Perennial/Herb Garden I found three more 8 ball zucchini ready to be picked. That makes 6 of these I've harvested so far. I love this zucchini!
When I got back inside I could smell something burning. I had made some banana bread with some soft bananas I had laying around, but I knew it hadn't been in the oven an hour yet. I opened the oven and, yep, it was the banana bread burning. I had set the oven temperature at 450 instead of 350!

I am really enjoying Vacation Bible School, but I am looking forward to this insane schedule being over!

I am linking this up to  @anoregoncottage.com

Sunday, July 10, 2011

In the Garden


There are new and interesting (to me anyway) things in the Potager this week.
We are continuing our hot days, big rainstorm routine and it is making the garden grow incredibly fast!

The rain gauge doubled as a japanese beetle trap today! That's fine with me!








The Mammoth Sunflowers are living up to their name. They are huge!

When they finally bloom, I'll only be able to see them from the second story window!

I am hoping to collect seeds to eat. I know you have to wrap the seed head in something so the birds don't eat them all.

I'm gonna need a bigger ladder!

Some of the Freckles lettuce has bolted. I am going to try to collect seeds from it.
This was my favorite lettuce this year.
We are still eating the ones that haven't bolted.
I am amazed how heat tolerant this lettuce is.
The leaves seem to be a bit thicker, but they are still tender and tasty.
I have about three spinach plants that I hadn't picked yet. I always seem to notice them after dinner and say, tomorrow, but then eat something else the next day. Poor planning on my part.
I guess ithey're bolting, but instead of getting flowers on the top , it's getting broccoli looking like things up and down the stalk! That's different.

I need to pick these and saute the leaves for dinner.


I've never grown onion before. Are they supposed to form on top of the soil like that?
Look at the size of this Black Krim tomato! And no bottom rot! I can't wait to eat this guy!
No signs of turning red yet.
This looks like it will be my first White Scallop Squash. I've had other little ones, but they all had blossom end rot. This guy looks pretty healthy!

And I love the little curly-cues this plant makes!

If you look past the leaves, you'll see two (there are actually three) Eight-Ball Squash.
These were my favorite new vegetable last year.
They get eaten when small so they are only a few days away from dinner!
Stuffed squash - yummy!

The spaghetti squash plant looks healthy, but there is the tell-tale damage along it's stem that a Squash Vine Borer may have made a home inside the stem. I will clean it out and bury the damaged part. Hopefully the rest of the plant will send down roots and survive the onslaught.

We are eating cucumbers already. They are so wonderful this time of year - a taste of summer. I remember having so many by the end of last summer that I could not keep up with them. But at this time of the season we anxiously watch each one, anticipating being able to harvest a true "summer" vegetable.

Our church has Vacation Bible School this week, so the garden may get ignored a bit. I'll have to make an effort to get up extra early to get the gardening done before work.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Cucumbers!

Yummy Cucumber Salad
This is so easy to make. I never measure anything in it and it always turns out great.
Slice cucumbers (I used 3) and add salt (maybe a teaspoon). Add sugar(maybe 1 1/2 tsp.) and white wine vinegar (maybe 1/4 cup). Add chopped parsley and dill (also from the garden!) and add water to barely cover. Taste to adjust taste. Stir and let sit a few minutes. Enjoy!


This year I planted Eureka Cucumbers. They are doing really well in the Potager.

This is the cucumber bed. The Cukes are climbing the fence. There are marigolds to the left and parsley in front of the cukes. All of my potager is in raised beds.