Our garden started out looking like this. Bare, cold, gray, yet full of promise.



On June 23, it looked like this. Much more full and lush (although not all of the plants have grown as well as the ones on the back right.



These beds furthest to the west contain quite a few different plants. The one furthest back has a variety of lettuces in it that were planted from seed. The closer one has broccoli, cauliflower, anaheim peppers, cayenne peppers, and jalapeno peppers all planted from seed. It also has eggplant plants that my mother-in-law purchased for me. I had put some eggplant seeds in the bed but they did not sprout.



The bed farthest back has peas, beans, and cantaloupe all from seed. The bed closest has red and white onions, scallions, and carrots all from seed (which you can barely see in the picture).



The bed farthest has sugar peas, pumpkins, squash, pole beans, corn, and cucumbers all from seed. The bed closest has ladybug tomatoes and yellow tomatoes. The ladybugs are from seed, but the yellow tomatoes I purchased as a plant because all of my cherries and beefsteaks died in a storm.

Companion planted around the various beds are marigolds, two kinds of parsley, two kinds of basil, oregano, cilantro, and dill. I believe I planted more, but I can't remember and I'm not going out there right now to find out. ;)

Last night, we had our first meal that had ingredients from our garden in it. I picked some sugar snap peas, shelling peas, and two kinds of beans (burgundy and green) to include in our frozen mixed vegetable for our vegan shepherd's pie. I took the vegan recipe from the cookbook Quick-Fix Vegetarian by Robin Robertson. This book has recipes that really take about thirty minutes to cook and prep (sometimes a little more, sometimes a lot less). I absolutely love her Shepherd's Pie with couscous topping, but since the recipe is copywritten, I'm not going to be able to share it with you. Instead, I'll share two pictures.





Instead of plain couscous, I topped it with tri-colored couscous. It looks festive and it tastes wonderful.

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From my house to yours, happy Fourth of July!

Labels: cooking, gardening