Monday, July 18, 2011

My Garden

Hey folks! I know it's been awhile.  I've been working, traveling to California and engulfed in my new project... gardening!

Like other "womanly" activities that one might expect girls to naturally possess, gardening is one that I must teach myself.  When it comes to houseplants it is a known fact I have the black thumb of death.  I can kill fake flowers.  It's really that bad.  I have no knowledge of plant germination periods much less what some vegetables even look like.  Did you know squash grows above ground?  I bet you did.

Since gardening goes hand-in-hand with cooking, I wanted to make a post about my "progress" on the blog!

My apartment has something called an Urban Garden centrally located in the apartment complex with 20-something slots.  I was on the waiting list for about 5 months and now have my own patch.  After pulling weeds for an hour I was ready to go.


At first I planted basil.  I figured it wouldn't grow so I planted the entire packet in two rows.  I took statistics and knew I was going to at least get one plant out of those odds.  After giving one basil plant away and using 3 cups of basil leaves for pesto I still have five plants that are each 2 feet tall.  Basil is great to include in your garden when you need a swift validation of your gardening ability... or to hide a small child.


I planted red and green bell peppers...

... and Eggplant which I plan to make one of my favorites - Eggplant Parmesan!!
I also included jalapeños!  I am going to be making jalapeño poppers this week so stay posted...

Lastly, I included yellow summer squash.  I bought two plants and put them at the end of my garden.  This is embarrassing to admit but for some reason I assumed they would grow underground.  Imagine my surprise when I see the largest squash ever squashing (ironic?) the bell pepper plant next to it.  What is this sucker doing above ground?! Ectopic pregnancy??

The picture below is the plant after I've picked the squash (squashes... squashies... squai??) and cut the stems back.  I'll have you know, not two days later the stems grew back threefold.

So, as it stands now, my gardening project is going well and providing fresh vegetables for me to use in the kitchen.  I'll be back later this week to detail the poppers and hopefully the eggplant parmesan!

If you have any tips - feel free to leave comments below.

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