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Rarely There

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Wednesday, November 15, 2006

hwyl, gardd



Finally, after a good 6 months, our vegetable and herb garden is laid to rest. All the plants are dug up, soil tilled a little, and a lot of compost piled up in the compost bin.

It was a good run this year - better than I expected. We just used compost, no pesticides, no fertilizers on the vegetable garden. We even thought about introducing some praying mantis and ladybugs in our garden to keep aphids and such in check. But, luckily this year, we didn't need to. All the plants survived fine, and yielded well.

Planting a bunch of peas first helped prep the bed for herb garden later. Also, thanks to the good prep work over late last winter and early spring, tilling and checking the soil composition and adding recommended natural items to balance the soil, the garden stayed quite healthy.

We had quite a few varieties of veggies and herbs and about 90% of them did well:
It was a lot of fun to just look in the back yard and plan a simple menu all summer - like mint and spinach rice, baby eggplant curry, eggplant and tofu, smoked eggplant pachadi, sambal terong, mint chutney, green tomato dal, and plenty of salads.

I managed to stew a bunch of tomatoes and can them. Also, made some marinara sauce and canned them for this winter. It was quite a bit of an effort, but, I managed to make some Tomato Thokku (an Indian side, aka achar) and can them as well. Tomato Thokku mixed in with some cream cheese makes a great sandwich spread.

Hmmm.. What else? Oh, ya, the currant bush did well - my wee tot loved running to the backyard and picking the ripe currants and snacking on them. The blueberries and raspberries didn't yield much, but they are brand new, and we figured it will take a couple of years before we start seeing more.

And, of course, Rhubarb, how could I forget? We made a few pies with them, and I decided to get creative and made rhubarb sambar (unfortunately, no picture of it), which turned out surprisingly good.

Well, that's it I guess...

It has gotten pretty cold and wet here in the Pacific Northwest.

As my husband says, Hwyl tan flwydd nesa, gardd, or something like that...

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4 Comments:

Blogger Jayarama Krishnan said...

>> It was a lot of fun to just look in the back yard and plan a simple menu all summer

I swear. And it was even more fun to come in unannounced, a couple of hours after you took that look, and share in the spoils!!
Don't worry about snaps of the rhubarb sambar, my tastebuds won't forget it in a hurry :)

7:03 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow, you have a great collection. Thats amazing. Do they consume lot of water?

Have you tried any of the indian vegetables like drumstick (murungai), bitter guard, snake guard. Also, it would be cool to try diff kindsa melon and fruit yielding trees like papaya, banana, pomegranate, seetafal. ;-) Great blog, keep up the good work. :-)

11:38 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You sure have a wonderful garden and great energy & amazing patience to grow so many different varieties. :) My dad used to tell me about how they grew vegetables in their backyard and front yard. Growing up in a city and living in an apartment didn't offer us the same opportunity. But i always imagined my dad's garden from his childhood and wanted to have one like that.

Your vegetable collection brought back all those memories. :)

jasper

8:21 AM  
Blogger Kay said...

What a beautiful garden, sheela! It was lovely to see those pics. thanks for sharing them here.

7:43 AM  

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