Monday, August 16, 2010

August Garden

The tomatoes are ready! Finally, lots and lots of Brandywine tomatoes. They were worth the wait. So far we have been slicing and eating them as fast as we can, but we are getting a little behind and I see a batch of spaghetti sauce in the near future.

The most dramatic growth in our garden this year has to be the Russian Mammoth Sunflowers. They tower above our heads and are bending over from the weight of their dinner plate sized flower heads. I told Curtis we should have planted these all around our yard and we would have had plenty of shade on the hot days we have been having. The bees seem to love them too. I haven't decided yet if we will dry the seeds for ourselves or leave them for the birds.
There has also been plenty of cucumbers and pear tomatoes. I found a great recipe for Quinoa Tabbouleh that uses almost all ingredients we have growing right in our own backyard (if only I had a lemon tree!). I have made a couple batches now and we eat it over several days, adding the feta just before serving. It is such a fresh, summer salad!
Today as I was outside harvesting some parsley and mint for another batch, I saw these little guys munching away on the carrot tops.
They are Black Swallowtail caterpillars. There are two large ones and a few smaller ones. I brought them inside and we will continue to feed them and watch them grow and change into butterflies. They are supposed to like parsley, which we have a lot of. It is funny that they were on the other side of the garden eating the carrot tops instead. Noah calls them 'ducks,' and I don't know why.
Because they had already eaten down a bunch of carrot tops, I had to harvest a few. I steamed these pretty Cosmic Purple carrots and mashed them up for Isaac to eat for dinner. He loved them of course. They were his first taste of garden goodness.The garden will soon be winding down for the summer, though I might try planting some more lettuce and spinach as the weather gets cooler. We shall see...

~Jen

4 comments:

  1. I love the sunflowers. How gigantic.

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  2. so happy to have found your spot...it is quite lovely!!! pleased to meet you and enjoy the rest of your summer!

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  3. How on earth did you grow this stuff? My sunflowers are always devoured before the heads can show, my carrots barely grew at all and the rest of my veggies were eaten by tiny green grubs...all that grew from all of my flowers and veggies and herbs were marigolds, an array of peppers, lavender an a couple of limas! And watermelon....I just couldn't keep the pests away!

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  4. We had to put up a fence to keep the rabbits out. We also did a lot of handpicking of beetles, but that didn't keep them from destroying the beans, strawberries, and basil. I wish I could grow watermelon!

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