As y'all know, I planted our first ever vegetable/herb garden this summer. It's been so much fun to watch things grow (or not grow...ha....although exciting is not the word I'd use for that...) and to learn how to nurture plants that we can actually eat. Over the summer we were able to harvest some cilantro before it got too hot, and we've had an ongoing harvest of basil that's been amazing and delicious (hello epic tomato basil soup!), but all of our vegetable attempts have either failed or taken forever. Until now!
After waiting and watching the entire summer, our pepper plant has finally started producing! And we were surprised to see that as the peppers got larger (but were still really small), they started turning purple! I knew I bought an envelope of mixed pepper seeds, but I didn't think that I'd end up growing one of the exotic ones. And yet here we are. It's pretty cool and they are absolutely beautiful. We've had some stray cats trying to utilize our vegetable beds (if you know what I mean....I mean poop...) and one of them jumped on our bigger pepper plant and knocked off the branch with our biggest pepper at the time, ultimately ruining it for eating because it wasn't ready. However, I cut that little guy open anyway and it smelled divine so I'm sure these peppers are going to be amazing. One of them will be made into a Purple Pepper Salsa, which I plan on bringing to Thanksgiving for all you Selby-ites to enjoy. Get excited!
When these peppers first turn purple, they're almost black because they're so dark. This is our biggest one. It'll be ready to pick in another week or so.
Our other pepper plant has these two little guys on it, but we'll have to wait and see what color they are. Pepper plants cross-pollinate though, so I don't know if that means they will automatically be purple or what, but the stems have purple in them, so who knows.
We also planted some cucumber plants, if you remember, along our chainlink fence on the side of the house. Well, these plants pretty much took over that whole side of the fence and are encroaching on our neighbor's fence as well. They are, by far, my most successful veggie this year. Pretty early on we noticed a baby cucumber growing low on one of the vines and I finally picked it last weekend after realizing that you can pick cucumbers pretty much whenever. I cut it up and made a quart-sized jar of pickles. I'd never had homemade pickles before, and Justin actually commented on the difference in color (pickles in the store are only bright green because they've been dyed bright green...something to think about...), but these pickles are seriously delicious. My recipe was pretty basic - brine, dill, garlic, pepper, red pepper, bay leaf - but the flavor is amazing. The cucumber itself added an unexpected sweetness...I mean...my mouth is watering just telling you about it. They're so good. Anyway, that was really cool and exciting to actually make an entire food item from something we grew in our backyard. It was even more satisfying than cooking with homegrown herbs.
Our cucumber vines.
Male and female cucumber flower cluster. The pollen from the male flower has to get to the female flower to make a cucumber. Our biggest pollinators are actually moths, so I've been struggling to get over my distaste of large brown flying bugs.
Here's the behemoth before I picked it.
Here's a baby cucumber. Cucumbers are covered in these pokey bumps as they grow. You can rub the pokey parts off in the sink after you pick them, but I think it makes them look a little icky on the vine. Haha!
This is that same baby cucumber a few days later (today). They grow super fast!
Here are two itty bitty baby cucumbers together. They start out super tiny and super not cucumber-like.
Here's the behemoth getting ready to be chopped and pickled! Isn't it massive?
Yummy pickles!
We also currently have some carrots growing around the cucumber vines, but they're not ready for picking yet. I think we have around 7 or so of those over there. We also had some green bean plants, but I don't think I watered them enough so they were stunted and produced a whopping 7 green beans total. Bummer.
One of our carrots. When they're ready to be picked, the carrots will literally start pushing themselves out of the ground. Haha!
Puny green bean harvest. Oh well.
Fun fact: November is actually a great time to plant a winter garden in Central Texas. Who knew? So now we've got more carrots, onions, celery, spinach, broccoli (take two), parsley, rosemary, oregano, thyme, and cilantro planted in our backyard, and I sowed a BUNCH of garlic in the front yard behind the roses because they're good companion plants. Those will overwinter and sprout in the spring, but everything else will grow through the winter. Isn't that cool? (Am I the only one who thinks so?) I also wanted to plant a strawberry patch because now's the time to do it, but I couldn't find shoots for sale anywhere, which was frustrating. I think I'll have to order some online in the future.
Our current garden. The basil and peppers are still there, although I'm working on stripping the basil to freeze in oil because it's getting close to the end of the season. And of course my marigolds are still doing their thing. Keeping pests away and whatnot. You'll notice that there are popsicle sticks all over the place in the beds. That's to keep our feline friends out when they have the urge. I saw that in a youtube video and it's genius! I put all the herbs in large pots so that the one time it freezes I'll be able to pull them inside.
Anyway, I could ramble away about our gardens forever. It's so much fun to grow your own food and the boys like checking on the progress of the peppers and cucumbers too. Actually, Lincoln just likes to climb into the bed and crawl around, but that won't happen anymore now that I've mined it with popsicle sticks. If anything, I hope this inspires you to try growing a little something yourself. Save some money, save the planet, and eat some really great food. (Seriously...it's so much better than what you get in the store...)
Love you all!
Annelise
