Happy Halloween! I’m sure every one has had (or will have) way too much candy already today, so how about a few veggies? It’s all about balance, right?
I skipped last week’s Harvest Friday and decided to cut it down to every other week while we’re in the slower winter season. We’ve been planting a lot lately, but much of it will slowly grow over the whole winter and be ready for harvest in spring.
Let’s talk about mint for a minute. If you are new at gardening and want something that will be successful 99.99% of the time… grow mint! It’s nearly impossible to kill, and is actually sometimes hard to control if you’re not careful. I always plant mint in a pot– not in the garden where it can take over! Mint is a perennial plant and grows year round where we are. It gets a little sad looking and holey-leafed in the summer when it’s hot and dry, but flourishes like crazy in the spring and fall. Our mint plant is back with a vengeance lately.
One day, I picked this basket of chard, beets, carrots and mint.
It all went into the juicer with some celery, apple and ginger. The mint gave the juice such great flavor, plus it’s a good source of manganese, copper and vitamin C.
Notice how tiny those carrots are? We put a lot of quail poop on our garden because most summer veggies LOVE nitrogen (aka poop) rich soil. When a lot of our carrots were growing HUGE bushy green tops and tiny roots, I went to Google to find out why. Turns out– too much nitrogen. That goes for carrots and most other root veggies, too. So we didn’t add any extra fertilizer to our recent planting and hopefully the carrots will be bigger.
Another day, I picked– you guessed it– more chard! Seriously, we have so much. I sauteed this and added it (along with some ground beef) to a jar of marinara for a semi-homemade kicked-up sauce. I really feel the need to take a picture whenever I pick it because it’s so darn pretty.
If you’ve been following the blog this week, you already saw my biggest garden accomplishment this week. (Or at least the most unique.) I made Roasted Beet and Sage Crackers using beets and sage from my garden. Sage is another perennial herb that’s been growing in my garden now for almost 2 years straight. I don’t use it nearly enough, but it’s a great fall flavor and paired well with beets. Check out the recipe!
I should have some fun new crops soon. Check out my little radishes, peeking out! They are almost ready to pick.
And this curly kale is getting close, too. I love how cute it is!
I think the only new thing we planted in the last couple weeks was cauliflower. We were low on garden space, so we planted 3 sprouts in pots. This is our first time planting cauliflower. I’m not sure how they’ll grow in pots, but we shall see.
Have a healthy, veggie-filled week and try not to eat too much leftover candy!
Happy belated Halloween, Jess! I ate a little too much candy from the leftover Reese’s that I stashed away for myself! 🙂 I love that you featured fresh veggies and greens! That kale looks delicious. I can’t wait to see what you will create with it!
Oh wow, that chard is just beautiful 🙂 And I am jealous of your sage…my favorite herb, but our plant is dead now (it’s snowing as I speak). I will have to wait for next summer I guess.
Aww, I will be so sad when I have to move back to somewhere with snow and frosts. I love my winter garden!
These vegetables look so perfect! After a little too much Halloween candy, juicing and veggies sounds about like what I need 😉
Love seeing pictures of your garden! Your chard is gorgeous! I have such a brown thumb, I’m can actually kill mint.
Lol Christin!! It’s ok, I once killed a cactus, so I understand 😉 But seriously, if at first you don’t succeed…. you know what to do!
One f my husband’s big goals now that he is back is to start growing some veggies in our backyard. You can bet that we’ll be referencing your Harvest posts regularly for the next few months. Fingers crossed that we can be even 10% as successful as you’ve been! Are there any resources (blogs, websites, books) you used when you got started?
Honestly, not really! A lot of googling whenever we had a question. But we just kind of winged things… which resulted in a few failures, but it’s a learning process. We would just buy seed packets and look at the map on the back to see what time of year they should be planted in our area. The summer garden is obviously the easiest, but once you are comfortable with that, it’s fun to branch out to some winter stuff. Assuming it doesn’t snow in Texas (does it?) you should be able to do some winter stuff! I LOVE the blog gardenbetty.com… it’s really inspiring!
Your little carrots are adorable! I definitely ate way too much candy over the last few days and am in some serious need of some fresh veggies! That rainbow chard is so beautiful! I don’t think I’ve ever eaten it before, but I’ll have to keep an eye out for in it, since unfortunately I don’t have quite the awesome garden that you have 🙂
You should definitely try chard! It’s one of my fave greens! It has a little more flavor than kale, but isn’t quite so bitter as turnip or beet greens.
Your chard is just too pretty! And I agree with mint being a safe thing to grow. I’ve always had great luck with mint. And I love it for making mojito’s : )
Yep! I think the only reason my hubby remembers to water our garden is so that he will have mint for his mint juleps. 😉
my mom just called me over the weekend to tell me that she just picked the last of the rainbow chard. Think I may have to go over there and “borrow” some haha :p