Anyone growing a garden this season?

[dksart]

Thanks!

I posted the herb pics in a new thread. The herb garden is doing so much better than my veggies.

[Grain Damaged]

Originally Posted by dksart

[COLOR="Teal"]lukalovescats: I made a batch of strawberry preserves and made some of it into Vanilla/Lavender Strawberry Preserves. Yum.

You wouldn't happen to be able to share that recipe would you?!

[dksart]

I would have to dig that up, not sure which recipe I used for the preserves. I'm sure it was a standard recipe for strawberry preserves to which I added some vanilla (or possibly some scrapings from a vanilla pod) and fresh lavender from my garden.

OK, I found it.......it's the sticky page from my Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving book.



7 cups sugar
8 cups whole fresh strawberries
4 tbs lemon juice
1 pkg powdered pectin

Place 5 cups crushed (with a potato masher) strawberries and the lemon juice in a sauce pan. Whisk in pectin and bring up to a full rolling boil over high heat, stirring constantly. Dump in all the sugar at once and still stirring constantly, return to a full boil that cannot be stirred down. Boil hard 1 minute more, remove from heat and skim off foam.

Stir in 1 Tablespoon vanilla before filling jars and insert a large sprig of lavender before sealing and canning. Remember to leave 1/4" headroom.

Good Luck!

[Ruby Rose]

This year I planted a container garden using large clay pots as the containers. I'm growing cherry tomatoes, green beans, jalepeno peppers, yellow bell peppers, rosemary, flat leaf parsley and curly parsley. I have some mint and oregano in smaller pots. Then I also have fruit trees: lemon, orange and apple. I love harvesting fresh produce from my backyard!

[sdes]

Ruby,
It sounds as if you and I have nearly identical gardens. I have a bathtub with three large size tomato plants where I also have my sweet basil. I have another small pot with a patio tomato, several yellow pepper plants, banana pepper and two green peppers. No fruit trees but I do have two grapevines in large pots and a lettes mixture in another pot. I think I am most excited about the potatoes I have in a garbage can. I had heard that you can grow them this way about twenty years ago but finally decided to try it. Supposedly I will get about twenty pounds of potatoes in the circumference of the size of the can. This is not a gigantic can on wheels. It's just about waist high and I only paid $16.00 for it. I also have a nice variety of herbs i.e. cilantro, thyme, rosemary, parsley, chives, to name a few and some catnip for my cats. Happy gardening.

[dksart]

I am growing tons of stuff this year. I should say I was, until it got so friggin' hot here. Everything is drying up even though I water several times a day. The heat index has been over 100 for the last two weeks and no rain in sight!

In my herb garden I have many different varities of mints and basils, tarragon, chives, thyme, lemon thyme, sage, tri-color sage, two kinds of rosemary, three oreganos, parsley, savory, chervil (almost dried up), epazote, and garlic.

In containers I have several different lettuces, a mesclun mix, a spicy mix, leaf lettuce and some mini cherry tomatoes.

My veggie garden has tomatoes (brandywine, lemon boy, Juliette, grape romas, Romas, celebrity, bush cherry and tiny sugar sweet ) eggplant (fairy tale (lavender stripe), black beauty, Ichiban, and White Cloud Nines), Sugar snap peas, English Peas, Burgundy beans, snap beans, yellow wax beans, pickling cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, straight neck, white patty pan, butternut, delicata squash, pumpkin, watermelon, silver queen corn, sweet potatoes, red potatoes, turnips, beets and radish.

All the root veg and corn are new to me this year. I hope I get some kind of crop from them. The radishes are soooo spicy! My peas are almost done. God, they were delicious!

I adore watching my seeds sprout, tilling the land, transplanting seedlings at the right time and watching them grow, but caring for them in this heat is almost unbearable! My dogs don't even want to go outside anymore!

Can't wait to see the water bill this month