First Big Harvest

This is possibly the most excited I've ever been since I started my garden!

It's not much compared to a lot other bloggers out there but this is my first time I got a significant harvest from my garden. :D Actual beans! Actual peas!! I can finally eat my lettuce!!! And I had a few more strawberries and rasberries but I kept eating them before I could bring them inside for a picture. Same goes for the peas lol. I never thought raw peas could taste so good!!! DELICIOUS :9

Tonight's dinner:

Scrambled eggs with side of garlic & butter sauteed beans and peas with a side of salad.

If only my chickens were laying eggs, I could make this meal with everything from the garden!! :D Minus the garlic and butter I guess. I need to grow garlic next year. And maybe get a cow haha.

From Seed to Seed

One of my goals when I started my vegetable garden this year was to try to get seeds from my plants to use for the next growing season. So despite the fact that they hog up my gardening space, I've been letting all my bolting plants stay put in hopes of a seed harvest :D

Problem is, I have no idea how to harvest these seeds. And they seem to be forming quick! I'll definitely swing by the book store after this post for some research material.

So far this is what's going on:

My radishes! I never got to eat a single radish from my first batch since they all bolted, but they made really pretty flowers and I'm thinking these pods are what the seeds will be in. Do I pick them then dry them? Or do I let it dry out on the plant?

My spinach. I see little clusters of tiny orbs on the base of the leaf stems so I'm guessing these are their seeds. Again, do I let them be? Or do I pick them off and dry them out?

My cilantro. I hear they self seed, but since I've got them in pots (shared with basil) I was hoping I could save the seeds and plant them in various parts of the garden next year. I see no seeds yet on these but the flowers sure do attract a lot of bees! A big plus for the overall garden.

The runners from my strawberries. This is a great big surprise for me. Well I knew that strawberries send out runners and multiply every year. What I DIDN'T know was that they send out multiple runners per plant!! Each one of my strawberry plants are sending out about 4-5 runners. Not only that, upon closer examination you can see that my runners are sending out runners! (pic on bottom right) I'm gonna have so many strawberry plants next year yay!!!

Lovely Red Strawberry

Do you see what I see? :D

There's a LOT of buds and berries on my three tiny strawberry bushes. This is soooo exciting!! I've grown strawberries once a long time ago but they were teeny tiny ugly looking berries that didn't taste very good. This time I bought Ranier Strawberries which are supposed to yeild bigger berries. Looking great so far! The backside is still a bit green so I'm hoping it'll be edible in another day or two. YAY.

Berryful Delight

I see flowers on my berry plants! There's always a pleasant surprise waiting for me in the vegetable garden :)

left: blueberries

right: strawberries

My berries are all placed right by my house where they receive a lot of full sun. It seems to be doing them pretty good. My blueberries are doing really well despite the worm attack it received pretty early on. A lot of the old leaves are eaten up but the new leaves stay untouched. I hope the beetles are eating up whatever attacked my blueberries!

My strawberries are perky and grew twice the size since I transplanted them from the pots I bought them in. I'm surprised the slugs and snails aren't attacking them since I always see them the most around my strawberry plant. Strange....

My raspberries seems to just LOVE the sun it's getting. The plant was less than a foot in height when I got it in April but now it stands about 3 feet tall! I see a couple buds on it now. I hope I see more real soon!

I can't wait to have fresh berries in the summer. I hear birds every morning around my garden though. Maybe I should put some netting around my plants?