Sunday Photos: What’s Growing?

Around the world, we are all in different stages of growing things.

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It sure is crispy around here in South Texas. I (Sincerely, Emily) have hope and check the weather report and radar to see if there is even a slight chance of rain anywhere in our future. Nope!  I am thankful for my water barrels…. even though they are almost drained, they are helping me water the vegetable garden. Last week I posted a bit about the Armenian Cucumbers that we are harvesting. I’ll post more about what is growing out there later in the week.

Armenian Cucumber

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Throughout this week, we will post about the things that are growing in our gardens.

I (Alexandra) work for a network of large community gardens. I love seeing the explosion of life at this time of year!

What is growing in your garden right now?

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ZUCCHINI !!

I have zucchini. This is happiness to me.

The story is, I can’t seem to grow zucchini at all. The dang squash vine borers are horrible. So I out smarted them and planted zucchini in my neighbors garden.

We watched the plant grown and develop beautiful leaves. Watched the flowers open and then the little zucchinis start to develop. In the blink of an eye – shazam – it was time to harvest (you know how sneaky that zucchini can be!)  The plants are loaded and I had to leave town! No kidding. All that waiting. The thrill to watch the zucchini start to develop and grow… and I leave town. My neighbors aren’t interested in eating zucchini, in fact, they have never had it before, but they will pick and shred it for me while I am gone.

So, I promise to bake them zucchini bread. I promise to stir fry some for them. Promise Promise promise. It will be great (I love zucchini!) I picked the zucchini in the above photo the day before I left town. I shredded them and stashed it in the freezer.

I am dreaming of zucchini fritters or poor mans crab cakes. I am dreaming of zucchini in my spaghetti sauce. Oh, I am dreaming of zucchini bread.

How are you preserving your fall harvests? How about your zucchini… How do you preserve that so you can use it later?

Sincerely, Emily

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Enjoying Homegrown Tea

This past fall I harvested a lot of my herbs for warming winter teas. I should have harvested them all summer long, but I got busy and forgot to do it until winter threatened, so I didn’t get as many as I wanted. When I harvest tea I carry a big bowl around with me and snip the fresh herbs. I keep them all separate in small paper bags that I’ve saved.

I picked about 2 pounds of herbs for tea this winter as well as a few savory herbs for seasoning (I also like savory tea on occasion) and some medicinal herbs.

What herbs made it into my harvest bowl?
-Catmint
-Blue Stocking Bergamot
-Anise Hyssop
-Peppermint
-Mountain Mint
-Lemon Balm
-Chamomile
-Lavender
-Greek Oregano
-Fennel Seed
-Genovese Basil
-Broad Leafed Plantain
-Comfrey

I’ve really been enjoying my chamomile that I harvested. I had one volunteer plant that I harvested a good amount of blossoms from earlier in the summer. These few flowers are from a plant I started later in the summer. For some reason I didn’t have much luck with my chamomile this past year, since I love chamomile tea I hope I have a better harvest this coming year! We’ve been drinking a lot of mint tea and I had my first cup of bergamot tea earlier this week as well. We weren’t able to grow all of the tea we drink, but hopefully if I can get a good chamomile harvest this year we’ll only have buy our favorite Traditional Medicinals Teas Lemon Echinacea and everything else will be homegrown.

I also have a few potted herbs that I bring in as houseplants, these include: rosemary, lemon thyme, lemon verbena and chives. All of these we’ve been enjoying in our food this winter.

Do you dry herbs for seasoning & tea?

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