Tasty Treats from my Garden

It's been a while since I wrote anything in here.  I have been making edibles, but I've been busy.  This year my garden is in the dumps.  Between the slugs, caterpillars, spiders and various diseases on my flowering plants, my garden kind of sucks, to put it mildly.
I planted eggplants, sweet peas, rhubarb, tomatoes (3 varieties), cucumbers, radishes, hot pepper, rue, chives, onions, colourful beets, colourful and orange carrots.

I have a few things growing in my kitchen, which I try to grow and re-seed all year round, this basil is one of those.  I love basil as much as cilantro, because it smells like summer.  I need to re-seed my cilantro, because I let it get to flowering and seeds, so it's the end of this round.  To keep herbs growing, pinch off tips, to prevent them growing flowering buds.  Once herbs start flowering, that is the end of the foliage.

 Buttercups.  Yellow is my favourite colour, again summer.

 I found this caterpillar, and then one more in my dill, near my sweet peas:

 This is how an onion blooms. I love allium flowers.

 This is a fresh onion chopped up:

 This is the onion before I chopped it up:

My kitchen grown chives.  I do have some growing in my yard as well.  I found out that rabbits don't like allium smells, so I planted chives and green onion, and yellow onions around and in between my other vegetables, and I think it's true.  Compared to last year, the rabbits didn't eat very much this year.

 Here is a sandwich with quark cheese / fromage frais, chives and s&p:

This is fromage frais with honey and fresh Niagara peaches.  I often have cottage cheese with honey and fruit, so this is an alternative.

Radishes from my garden.  I planted these from seed, and they grew all squiggly.  They are supposed to be oblong, but the stems are too wavy.

 I love rye with butter and fresh sliced radishes.  So simple, so delicious.

 Yellow and green zucchini from the Farmers Market:

 Raspberries from my backyard:

 These lilies are a lovely shade of red.  If you notice the leaves, they are all chomped by slugs.

 Snap peas from my yard, so sweet:

 With snap peas, you can eat the pods as well, they're sweet and crunchy, and so juicy:

I hope my other vegetables produce something to harvest.  If they do, I will post more photos.

Indoor Gardening

A few weeks ago I started a mini indoor garden.  I try to have some fresh herbs, I do mostly outside when the weather is warm and stable.  I say stable, because for about two weeks we've had 20+ C outside, about 4x the seasonal norm.  It's the middle of March.  Today is cooler, hopefully winter won't be back.  I didn't want to take chances with planting seeds outside just in case it went below zero again.

Here is a photo of my mini indoor garden:

What you see there are 2 pots of heirloom garlic, I used my last 2 cloves, parsley, and mixed greens.  The fluffy green plant on the left is a decorative asparagus fern.  The garlic is growing very fast, so I knotted the leaves so the plant starts focusing more on the bulb, as opposed to the foliage.  I haven't decided yet, if I'm going to let one grow seeds, or if I will use both for the garlic cloves.  I might do that, and then just re-sow a few of the cloves, instead of growing it from seeds.  Last night I actually added two more cans, one with chives, and one with green sweet basil.  I love fresh basil.  Chives are delicious chopped on a fresh piece of crusty rye or pumpernickel with butter, farmer's cheese or cottage cheese, and s&p.  I prefer chives to green onions, they have a slightly milder flavour, and are significantly thinner, you can also dehydrate them.

I came across this nifty idea for indoor planting and reusing/ recycling:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150745621612053&set=o.189287804456890&type=1&theater

If I get my hands on some pop bottles, I will definitely try this.

BTW, this is what I've got blooming in my yard to date (this year):

The crocusses came in first, and the blooms are already gone, I only had 3 flowers, so I didn't bother collecting the saffron.  For those who don't know, saffron are the yellow (reproductive) bits inside the crocus flower.  I didn't actually plant them, they were there from previous owners, or possibly squirrels.  Super tiny and just poking from below the shrub you see in the background.  The mini daffodils, I planted last fall, in a not so straight row.  I love them all.  Instant smiles.  My winter rose has small buds, I planted it last year, so I didn't even expect any flowers this year.

Happy gardening!