Tomato Update: You may have noticed in my garden pictures that there is a renegade tomato plant in the northwest corner of our plot. It actually belongs to the neighboring plot, but since those delicious cherry tomatoes are on my side, then I'm going to eat them. I found the best recipe ever from ThePioneerWoman (with a few changes)... 2 c. organic cherry tomatoes (halved or quartered) 4 green onions 1/4 c. olive oil 4 T. balsamic vinegar 12 fresh basil leaves (chiffonade) Ha

What is there to know about beans as a beginning gardener? First off you should know that beans fall into two large groupings: bush beans or pole beans. I was unaware of this fact...I'm a jump in and dig kinda gal...and just assumed that all beans crawl up trellises. So I follow the directions on the packet and soak my beans overnight, plant my beans, tend to them lovingly and overall get a great crop of beans that never rose above 2' from the ground...trellises unused. Undau

Rainbow Swiss Chard will have you seeing unicorns! It is the most luscious, delicious green I have ever eaten. I would not steer you wrong here. Do you lean towards the more cheffy side of cooking when you are in your own kitchen preparing meals for family, friends or yourself? Rainbow Swiss Chard will make you look like a chef rockstar! It can be a most welcomed culinary substitute for celery and spinach in your kitchen arsenal. It grows easily in a patio pot or backyard

Did you ever want to know the answer to this question? "What's the difference between Snow Peas, Garden Peas and Snap Peas?" Well I found this information tremendously helpful myself, so I'm sharing it here with you from The Produce Moms website. Snow Peas, also known as Chinese pea pods, share common characteristics with Garden Peas and Snap Peas. However, there are differences between the three peas... Snow Peas Mild flavor Small peas Flat pods Entire pod can be consumed

Do you love those amazingly whimsical fairy pumpkins that come out in the Fall as much as I do? I adore them. They have that Cinderella-esk look that spirits your mind off to dreams of what could be, and they make lovely holiday decorations as well. Their matte dusty coloring lends itself very well with today's upscale neutral interior decorator's palette...looking so faaanncy! "Fairytale pumpkins...are a French winter heirloom variety and are members of the Cucurbitaceae fam

Actually I mean squash...my spaghetti squash that is! The weather has been so warm and the squash, melons and cucumbers have been taking advantage of all the sunshine. We've been getting several 8-10" zucchini squash from our two plants and had 5-7 spaghetti squash growing and thriving. That is, they were thriving until the neighborhood rabbit came to visit and ate each and every one! Next year, we will need to put rabbit-proof cages around each squash when they are still sm

Gardening: Cheaper than therapy...And you get tomatoes! Lots and lots of tomatoes! There are so many things you can make with tomatoes. A single tomato plant graces the gardener with a lot of fruit. We only have 6 plants and we easily harvest 4-5 lbs twice a week. We pickled, roasted, stewed, sauteed with pasta, tossed with salads, sliced on sandwiches, gave to neighbors and co-workers...you get the jist. Here are 3 recipes that I feel are outstanding and I want to share them

Wondering what to do with all your peppers? Me too. No, I didn't actually harvest a peck of peppers, Peck is a unit of capacity. In the United States the peck is used only for dry measure and is equal to 8 dry quarts. In Great Britain the peck may be used for either liquid or dry measure and is equal to 8 imperial quarts, or one-fourth imperial bushel (www.britannica.com/science/peck). but our pepper plants are yielding 5-8 peppers a week, which doesn't sound like a lot until

Oh, glorious purple! The cabbages are now ready to be harvested and eaten. I found a couple of cabbage recipes that we tried and that you must try as well if you are cabbage lovers. The first one is a vegetable stir fry which we substituted our red acre cabbage for the green cabbage that it called for and you can see the amazing color that it gave the dish. The second recipe is a lot like a slaw. It is crispy, crunchy and tangily-sweet...so good. Vegetable Pancit Stir Fry 8 o

Our brussel sprouts are growing so well! When I planted the seedlings they looked pitiful and I thought I'd lose 1 or 2, but all 6 plants have survived and are thriving :) The brussels are the bottom tier plants; I planted them with the mammoth sunflower seeds. Apparently, "growing brussels sprouts requires cool weather. The ideal climate is the 'fog belt' of the Pacific northwest, but they will grow in just about any part of the country. A slow-growing, long-bearing crop, Br

I want to give a very heart-felt shout out to Monica. Mike's friend at work, Monica, goes to the Fullerton College Horticulture Department's Tomato Sale every year. This year she brought back 2 gorgeous San Marzano tomato plants for our garden. I love the plants, but most of all I appreciate her thinking of us and our garden. Her San Marzanos have been planted in a place of honor. We expect some amazing meals to come out of these tomatoes. San Marzanos are a prized Roma typ

Apparently, there was a break in at our HBCG plot while we were out of town at our National Convention in Layton, Utah. Peter's cousin, Popeye Cottontail broke in and ate my spinach! No, I did not catch him in the act LOL... I wish! (image taken from retrieverman.net) But let's be honest, if I had caught him in the act of eating my spinach, I would have let him continue and just made a photo-op out of it :) But look at my poor spinach plants...all four squares of spinach loo

This week's rockstars are the Early Red Acre Cabbages and Mammoth Sunflowers. The cabbage greens have taken over their box, though we can't see their heads yet. We harvested a few broccoli crowns and learned that when you see yellow flowers starting to form, to cut the floret off quick because it will make the texture mealy. However, the broccoli we ate from our garden was the best broccoli on the planet! There are still florets on the stalks that look promising and should tu

Our lettuces are giving us big returns, so much so that I decided to get a bit creative with our salad last night since we are eating them everyday. I found the best recipe from Budgetbytes that I tweaked a bit AND it was so good I had to share it with you... https://www.budgetbytes.com/2017/02/roasted-cauliflower-salad-lemon-tahini-dressing/ This salad is a combination of warm and cool veggies, a little spicy heat from the chickpeas and a refreshing tangy-ness from the dress

Before thinning After thinning Yay! Our very own greens... Two months in and our Huntington Beach community garden plot is growing well! Lot's of things are happening; however, most (but not all) of it is underground...lol...but we are seeing satisfying progress :) Lettuce is busting out of their squares, so we chatted up the gardener to the north of us to find out when we should/could eat this gorgeous lettuce and she said she's been harvesting for a couple of weeks now. The

I am so proud...my seeds are sprouting. #beans #organicgardens #communitygardens #veggievirgins #beginninggardeners #seedlings

What a day! We finally got veggies in the ground...whoop. In the interest of small, fast successes, we laid in a trellis grid and planted our first box with organic seedlings. Since it is the end of December, we really couldn't start with seed right off, so we planted our box with vegetable seedlings and pollinator attractors. YouTube has been spectacular in our quest to learn gardening techniques. We found a great video on how to lay a trellis grid for square foot gardening

We spent a fantastic 3 hours in the garden on Saturday:) First things first, we decided to go with Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew (www.squarefootgardening.com). It looks way do-able and we can create it in phases so that we can be successful pretty quickly without having everything planned out from the get go. This may work for you as well if you have a small space or are already container gardening as it is very similar. So we assembled our first 4'x4' box and wh

Welcome to my Beginning Gardener Experiment. I am calling this an experiment because I have never ever had an organic garden or ever had a blog. Full disclosure: I did have a wheel barrel garden a few years back. I believe that there are others of you out there that want and need plant therapy in your life, but not sure where to start. Maybe you don't have space? time? know how? Let's do this together! I live in an apartment in Southern California, upstairs that is, and have