I love spring! In with the new...

Spring has been really stunning here in north Texas. So many beautiful wildflowers and green fields to behold, you would not believe it.

Just like everything else in nature, spring means out with the old and in with the new for vegetable gardens. My broccoli, spinach, lettuce, and arugula are all growing tall and producing flowers now. Check out the arugula.

The broccoli is even making new friends. According to one of the other community gardeners, these are the larvae of cabbage butterflies.

I've been picking them off by hand each day. But they work fast...

It's time to get rid of these cold-weather plants and start up some new summer crops. FUN!

I'm letting the broccoli stay for now to see how big I can get the blooms. But arugula is out, as are some teeny lettuce plants.

Now, I've got a wonderful yellow heirloom tomato variety, a few yellow squashes, and this pretty pepper.

A new journey begins...

Garlic Tops have a name! (besides mmmm...)

Thanks to Willow's garlic comment, I now want to eat my green garlic tops.

I found a few recipes online for them. They are called scapes.

Carolyn Cope at seriouseats.com gave me really quick and easy recipe: scape hummus.

Pretty easy, which makes me already love it. I just chopped up a small bunch of scapes just like I would green onions, and mixed them up with store-bought hummus.

Then, a little lemon...

I had a few of these down home-looking jars leftover from Christmas after giving homemade almond butter as presents. A little more fun than tupperware, no?

Et voila! I'm making a chicken sandwich with it today.


Thanks to http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/06/the-crisper-whisperer-what-to-do-with-garlic-scapes-recipe.html for recipe idea.

Garlic! (Finally!)

 
I planted this garlic (I believe) around November. What a pleasure growing garlic has been! I just put a clove from the grocery store in the ground and it grew and grew and grew.

The hardest part was after the green leaves above-ground got big, I still had to wait for the bulbs in the ground to fill out. I've been waiting for months.

I really didn't know when to harvest it--I just kept digging around the base from time to time to check for garlic bulbs. For so many months, no bulbs.

Until today!

Tired of waiting, I asked one of the other community gardeners to come take a look. She's a lot bolder than me, so she said, "just pull it out and look at it!" I'm always scared of messing up my garden so part of me couldn't believe I really could just do that. But, you can! So that's what she did! And ready it was.

Now, onto my favorite part, EATING IT.

There are 3 more garlic plants still in the plot. I'll get pics of them up soon for you...

Welcome!

Hello and welcome! I'm so excited to begin sharing my vegetable gardening adventures with you. Learn with me, grow with me, and best of all, eat with me as I enjoy and share the abundance of nature with you.

More to come!