1. Making one more huge batch of various tomato sauces, soups, dips with tomatoes, peppers, celery, bay leaf, oregano, rosemary, thyme, garlic chives, onions, and parsley - all from my herb and veggie garden.
2. Made afternoon tea from tropical fruity pineapple salvia with sweet Aztec herb leaves (instead of sugar) - from my garden.
3. So far - success with the vanilla orchid cutting - this is the plant that produces those expensive vanilla beans - my second attempt:).
It is a huge climber and not exactly easy to get started and cultivate but hey.
4. Drying bundles of mint and different herbs and freezing Elderberries for the next two weeks.
I plan to try at least three different recipes from Elderberry Elixir to syrup, to tea to compote with whipping cream, elderberry wine and a fried sweet treat from dunking fresh elderberry flowers into a sweet batter.
This is my Elderberry year.
I finally have enough - a very long row along the ditch that provides plenty of fruit for the birds and us to enjoy.
5. My lovely neighbor is making the best jam ever with the passion fruit I grow, it is the kind that tastes like Maracuja. I have it growing along our shared fence and there is a bumper crop harvest for us both to play with.
When I get to feeling better I plan to try a Hawaiian recipe for passion fruit pie - maybe I'll skip the pie crust and just serve up the filling in a glass dessert dish instead.
The filling is always the best part, right?:)
6. Making a list of which herbs I need/want to propagate asap and which herb and veggie seeds I have to save. This isn't just for the joy of saving money or getting free plants.
Some herbs are difficult to find and expensive. If you have a big garden like I do you can't really afford to spend $7.50 to $9.99 on one single plant.
Seeds are not always reliable and often harder to grow than you think although worth it in the long run, but it is not exactly my forte. Weather and insect infestations wreak havoc... or maybe you started too early or too late...
Heirloom plants reproduce true and if you were lucky enough to find a particular pepper that you really like it's infuriating if you can't get it again next year.
This year I have a volunteer pepper plant from the compost with just the right amount of spiciness. A hint of heat that doesn't destroy the flavor of everything else you eat or flames igniting in your throat.
Bummer
I failed to get cuttings from the different basil plants incl. holy Tulsi and worst of all the African Blue basil which the bees are crazy about this past year. My basil seeds did not take this year and I haven't been able to find African Blue Basil anywhere (it cannot be grown from seed) - it makes a nice big bush and lives about three years, bees practically set up house in it.
I discovered that the new pepper variety I tried this year is really only suited for fresh snacking or at best a quick kiss of the pan, but they do freeze well.
Those are the sorts of things I wish they'd tell you so you can plan for it. It has been producing like crazy for many weeks now.
A winner if you like to just snack fresh from the garden or whip up a pepper stir-fry, and great if you like the convenience of fresh frozen from your own garden...
Thankfully I picked up one other pepper on a whim which has a solid strong flavor and is perfect for grilling and sauces - I'm definitely saving seeds from it as well even though it is not a heavy producer but it makes up for it in flavor.
At the plant festival, I found a Costa Rica plant booth that had sweet pepper, in a sea of spicy peppers. The leaves don't even look like any peppers I've seen before but the plant is fat and happy, actually, it looks positively lusty if one can apply that term to a plant:).
Always a little thrill to successfully grow, a new to you plant, without knowing how it will taste or what to expect.
(I bought a lemon verbena plant there but it turns out it is a different variety popular in Costa Rica, medicinal and a taller bush - I don't mind but I wish I'd paid better attention because yeah, obviously the leaves are quite different, I should have seen that, duh.)
Found an heirloom Gorbachi pepper there too - the curly cues shape of them is a treat for the eyes. Makes me wish I had a grandkid to enjoy it with. It is going to town now growing strong but it took its own sweet time to get there.
I'd tried these before from seed but the results were longer but straight and thin peppers, this plant has those fun curley cues - so now it is just a question of flavor.
Sorry guys, I didn't mean to ramble on so.
My garden - the never-ending experiment makes me smile every day.
Today I saw a Blue Jay burying a peanut in one of my planters - I always thought it was only the squirrels that buried their food.
Since I counted more than fifteen peanut plants all over my garden I guess now I should look up whether we can safely harvest these for human consumption or is there a peanut variety only for the birds?