Working the Land

It's good to get back to gardening. Over last few weeks we have been working hard on getting our community garden patch ready for the season. Turning the garden and removing all the rocks that appeared over the winter was hard work. But lots of helping hands made the job easier. Nobody likes the weeding part...

The potatoes are in the ground and we planted some fava beans for the first time. This weekend we will add carrots and beets. Do you have a garden?

Let me tell you there is nothing as yummy as a freshly picked garden salad. The leaves in the salad you see in the photo were just from thinning out the lettuce we had planted a few weeks ago. It was the best thing I ate since the last garden tomatoes in the fall...

Colorful Carrots

Today we harvested carrots from our community garden patch. They were so pretty I just have to share this photo.

They come in red, white, yellow, and orange. The yellow and white ones taste more like a parsnip. I made a carrot salad for dinner.

The Harvest: Part Two

Can somebody here please tell me the difference between a pumpkin and a squash? I'd like to know.

Remember our gardening project? The wait is finally over! No worries about frost. It's been so warm in Colorado, we lost fear of imminent frost destroying our crop. 110 days to mature? No problem!

We went and harvested 8 giant ugly squashes on our community patch. How can something as ugly as a Zucca Barruca taste so yummy? It looks like the skin of a witch covered in warts really...But oh, the things you can make with this squash.

Last week we cut a single squash in half. It weighed 20 pounds and provided food for our two families for several days. We roasted it and ate it on the side with dinner. We baked it in the oven, and from the pulp I made: pumpkin gnocchi, pumpkin soup, and 3 panfuls of muffins. Delicious. I will share my recipes soon! For now just enjoy the pictures of the harvest!

Garden Patch Status Report

Remember our Three Sisters Garden project? Before we went on our trip to New Mexico the dads put down some straw in the "trenches" between the planted hills. They did so to retain moisture from watering and keep the weeds down. Did it work?

The good part is: The plants on the mounts have grown immensely and look big and healthy. Wow! Check out the corn and squash plants!

The bad part: The weeds continued growing. They sprouted up through the layers of straw which makes weeding a bit of a challenge.

The children still don't like weeding. Neither do I, in the heat of the day mosquitos swarming about us...We had to bribe the kids with slushies to get the job done yesterday. After weeding for an hour, in the blazing heat, we all got a well deserved reward: Lemon Berry Slushies. We drank them so fast it gave us brain freeze. Quite painful, but oh so good. LOL

Also the beans have been planted about a week ago. My husband snuck out to plant them all by himself...Not fair! There is no documentation of the planting, and you can't really see the bean plants in the pictures because they are still quite small compared to the "older" sisters, named corn and squash.

Now the sisters are happily growing together. The family is complete!