hwyl, gardd

Garden 2006

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:

• Eggplants: calliopes, ichiban, black beauty, kamo
• Tomatoes: about 14 plants in all - some cherry, some grape, some super sweet, some purple, some yellow, some regular roma
• Chilies: superchilies (green turns red), balloon chilies (sort of shaped like a flower or a bell), serranos, thai chilies
• Capsicum (Bell Peppers): a couple of varieties, some turned yellow to red, others remained green
• Peas: a ton of peas early on, which prepared the bed for planting herbs mid-season
• cucumbers, zuccini, pumpkins
  
• Squash: butternut, sweetmeat, crookneck, summer squash
• Herbs: mint, cilantro, chives, lavender, shiso, rosemary
• Greens: tons of mesclun salad greens and spinach
• Onions: red
• Potatoes: regular, red and purple

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...