lettuce from last year

I decided my first post this summer has to be about the lettuce that planted itself and kept us in salads all spring (of course, a picture of my girls will soon follow!).

coriander

All my cilantro has gone to seed, and so it is time to harvest the coriander. Well, past time, actually, but that is the case with everything this summer. Once the seeds are dry, they just fall off the stalks when you brush them with your hand. I usually catch them in a colander, and then try to sift out the stray bits and pieces (easier said than done). Of course, many of them the seeds fall and start the next crop of cilantro. Cilantro is something we always like to have on hand (and I absolutely hate buying at the grocery store). Luckily it reseeds itself so easily that it is the perfect herb for the lazy gardener (which would be the appropriate title of my blog, now that I think about it).

Technorati Tags: herbs, coriander, spice

garden spaceships

Ok, I’m not talking extraterrestrials or anything. A couple of years ago I asked Chris to make me some covers so that I could continue to grow lettuce through the winter. He eagerly took on the challenge, and quickly created these. Somehow we started calling them “the spaceships”, and the name stuck. But now that I actually think about it, they don’t really look like spaceships, do they?

At the time, I wanted something I could move around the garden easily, whenever I wanted. These fit the bill perfectly, as they are light and easy to take on and off. Also, because you don’t want all your lettuce maturing at the same time, the size was just perfect for one batch. The plexiglass is curved to maximize the light coming in (although two sides had to be wood, for stability). I wish I had my act together this winter, and had taken a picture of the lettuce with snow on top. We’ve never had any damage from freezes when using these, and have been able to grow lettuce outside all winter long.

Technorati Tags: lettuce

my vegetable pornography series

I sure have missed playing in my garden and taking pictures.

This “working for the man” thing can be such a burden. It was back to the good life tonight, though. Chris dead-headed the flowers while I wandered around taking a zillion pictures and getting bit by mosquitos. Then we BBQ’d some duck and ate this delicious pepper, and finished it all off with another watermelon.

Call me crazy (go ahead, I know you do), but doesn’t this pepper look, I don’t know, naked or something? I really think this pepper has a chance to become America’s Next Top Model. I mean, until we ate it.

And it tasted as good as it looked. It was a Buran sweet pepper that I got from Seed Savers Exchange.

Technorati Tags: peppers

a plethora of pretty pepper pictures

I think I’ve already mentioned that I’ve planted a fairly big crop of black hungarian peppers from seed. We had one plant last year and made a jar of paprika with it. We like a little kick in our cooking, so it was a nice supplement to the more common sweet paprika. This year I went hog-wild and planted a dozen or so seedlings, which are doing quite well (but falling on top of each other, as I ran out of stakes and cages).