How Does Your Garden Grow?

Our early spring vegetable planting is doing well and we are able to start enjoying fresh from the garden veggies!

There is leaf lettuce, radishes and spring onions.

Radishes are a tasty addition to a salad or serve with sea salt as an appetizer or snack.

Chives and other fresh herbs provide wonderful flavor to so many dishes.

Romaine lettuce plants, almost ready to harvest.

And my favorite, garden fresh asparagus.

Are you planting a vegetable garden this season? How does your garden grow?

Pineapple Zucchini Bread

All of a sudden we have an abundance of summer squash in the garden, so this morning I used some to make my favorite zucchini bread recipe.

We have both green zucchini and yellow summer squash. Either one can be used in this recipe. We try to pick the squash when it is small, and the most tender, to saute or grill. But occasionally we miss one and this is a good way to use a bit larger squash since it will be grated for this recipe.

Pineapple Zucchini Bread

(makes 2 loaves)

3 eggs

2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup vegetable oil

2 cups grated zucchini

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup crushed pineapple, drained

1 cup chopped nuts (I used walnuts)

Beat eggs, sugar, vanilla and oil together until light and fluffy. Stir in zucchini.

Then add flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda and mix well.

Stir in pineapple and nuts.

Bake in 2 greased and floured loaf pans for 1 hour at 350 degrees. Insert toothpick in center of loaf to make sure they have baked long enough. They may need another 5 minutes or so, depending on the moisture content of the squash.

Let pans sit on a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes before removing loaves from pan. Then cool loaves completely before storing.

The pineapple and 2 cups of grated squash make this a nice moist bread. It's wonderful for breakfast with a smear of butter or cream cheese. Since this recipe makes two loaves there will be one for you and one to share! Or, you can wrap the extra loaf and place in the freezer.

I'd love to know what you think if you try this recipe!

Dinner, Fresh From the Garden

I will admit that our vegetable garden doesn't look so good right now. There are way too many weeds. And too much rain and cool temperatures here in Indiana, have left the tomato plants looking like they do in September - past their prime. But there are lots of ripe tomatoes, peppers, squash and herbs. So I would say that like so many other things in life, it's not the look that counts!

I went out to check the garden before deciding what to cook for dinner, and look at all the goodies I found! So tonight it's going to be fresh tomato sauce with meatballs over pasta, and sauteed zuchinni.

What's growing in your garden?

Fresh from the Garden

After all the hard work of preparing the Spring garden - tilling, and planting seeds and tiny seedlings, it's wonderful to reap the rewards. Fresh produce from our own backyard! We had a delicious salad and some roasted asparagus with dinner last night.

It's fun to pick out the new packets of seeds at the garden center - radish, lettuce, cucumber and squash.

We usually purchase our tomato and pepper plants instead of starting them from seeds.

The first planting of romaine lettuce.

Tasty fresh radishes.

And this is one of my favorites -fresh asparagus!

What are you growing in your garden?

Share Your Backyard Bounty

Plant a Row for the Hungry.
There are over 84 million households with a yard or garden in the U.S. If every gardener plants one extra row of vegetables and donates their surplus to local food agencies and soup kitchens, a significant impact can be made on reducing hunger.

Join the Garden Writers Association's grassroots campaign to fight hunger by cultivating an extra row of vegetqables for a local food bank or soup kitchen. To join a campaign and find out how to share your backyard bounty with more than your neighbors, go to gardenwriters.org. Just click on the make a donation link and find and find a donation site in your area. I was pleased to find two groups of Master Gardeners volunteer commitees in my county.

First Look at Spring

It's still a little too early to plant very much in the garden here in the Midwest. My husband has planted a few seeds. . . early lettuces, spinach and radishes. And we're just now seeing the first tips of asparagus sprout out of the dirt. But it's not to early to dream of warmer days to come and to enjoy what's already in the greenhouse at the local garden center. In honor of the first day of Spring, we made our first trip the the greenhouse!

The beautiful ferns and small perenial plants will grow more lush as the temperatures rise.

The bright colored annuals in these hanging baskets will soon grow and cover the green planters!

And these tiny seedling of tomatoes, peppers and onions will be ready to plant in the garden in about 6 weeks!

But, I'd better not get ahead of myself, I still have lots of trimming, raking and Spring yard clean-up to do.

A Bountiful Harvest!

Even though it's been a sometimes too wet, and kind of cool summer, we are getting a bountiful late harvest of vegetables.

I picked a basket full of tomatoes to make a big batch of chilli. It's great to have in the freezer for an easy homemade meal! And the beautiful bell peppers are great for stuffing, to use with stir fry, pepper steak and also freeze well to use over the winter.

I made the fun collage of my vegetables using the new collage feature in Picnik! Picnik is a photo editing software that you use in your online browser. It has lots of fun photo editing features, and fonts shapes and seasonal graphics that are easy to use.

Cool As A Cucumber

Cucumber Salad

I love this time of year for the bounty in the garden!

It's so easy to make fresh delicious meals with vegetables from the garden. This is an old fashion recipe that's still a favorite at my house.

4 medium cucumbers, peeled and thinly sliced
1 teaspoon salt
half of a red onion, thinly sliced
1/3 cup white vinegar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon dill weed
1/4 teaspoon pepper

1. Place sliced cucumbers in a large bowl and toss with salt. The salt will remove excess moisture from the cucmbers.

2. Refrigerate for 30 minutes, then drain excess liquid. Add sliced onions to cucumbers in bowl.

3. Whisk together remaining ingredients to make the dressing. Pour over the cucumber and onion mixture. Toss well and refrigerate two hours before serving.

Serves 6

Enjoy!

Awesome Asparagus

Asparagus spears growing in my garden.


Asparagus spears ready for dinner.

Asparagus plants mature very slowly. It takes three years from seed to first light harvest. Most gardeners buy one year old roots to plant and still have to wait two years to harvest the first spears. But, if you have the patience, it's well worth waiting. What a treat to enjoy the tender spears cooked on the grill, roasted in the oven, or added to salads and pasta dishes. The harvest season is April and May, then sadly it's time to let the plants enter their revival period.