GrowCookEat - Garden Tour

I hope you didn't miss GrowCookEat too much last week. I'm guessing you probably really liked the Mother's Day gift ideas for "The Edible Gardener," and all the fun giveaway items. The giveaway is over now, but if you still need shopping ideas for Mom (or maybe want to hint to your family what you would like for Mother's Day) you can head over to the gift guide here, or check out the entire Mother's Day gift guide series.

---

I haven't talked about our garden at all this year, so I thought it would be fun to share with you a slide show of pictures from our garden. We have a garden on our side yard, about 10 ft x 25 ft. In addition to that, we've added a few things here and there in the backyard that are edibles: a dwarf nectarine tree, 2 grape vines (Green Thompson Seedless and Red Flame). My kids love grapes, so I think that will be really fun. We have a trellis for each in a corner of our back wall where the play area is. I can't wait till it's covered in vine, it's going to be gorgeous!

Here's a list of what we've got going on for 2010, new plants for this year are marked with an asterisk.

Spring Edibles:

• Rhubarb
• Strawberries
• Asparagus (though we still have 1 more year till we can harvest)
• Sugar Snap Peas
• Arugula
• Spinach
• Watercress*
• Brussels Sprouts*
• Swiss Chard*
• Broccoli* (already harvested for 8 weeks and now it's done)
  

The watercress is a little bit of an experiment. My grocery store sells it with roots still attached. I bought it a while back for the Curried Chicken Salad with Watercress. After we ate all the watercress, I decided to plant the roots to see what would happen, and it's actually growing now!

I attempted a fall garden last year and one my choices was Brussell Sprouts. I think I didn't plant them early enough for a fall harvest, but they overwintered and really started growing when spring came. The only problem was that they never produced any sprouts. They're just covered in pretty yellow flowers. I picked up a few more plants for spring to try again, so we'll see!

Summer Edibles:

• Zucchini
• Yellow Squash*
• Butternut Squash*
• Tomatillo*
• Red Bell Pepper
• Yellow Bell Pepper
• Eggplant (Tried last year, but tomatoes overran it. Trying in a new area this year. Our wind has damaged it pretty bad so I may end up buying a new plant.)
• Tomatoes
• Herbs
• Thompson Seedless Grape*
• Red Flame Grape*
• Dwarf Nectarine*
  

We're trying several new varieties of tomatoes because I wanted to involve Logan and let him help me pick them out. We have one of each. Oldies, but goodies: Grape and Yellow Pear. New for this year: Sweet Million, Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, Green Zebra, New Yorker, and Golden Girl. Hopefully it won't be a mistake on our part to try so many new varieties in one year.

For Herbs we have basil, lemongrass, thyme, thai basil, orange mint, dill, cilantro, chives, rosemary, oregano, sage, tarragon, and flat leaf parsley.

The tomatoes and herbs have just barely been planted, so they're still pretty small. I haven't really used the herbs except for cilantro and rosemary because I want them to grow some more before I start hacking at them every day.

---

Gardening Links for this week:

• Garden to Table: White Bean Hummus with Spinach
  
• Garden to Table: Linquine with Lemon Roasted Asparagus
  
• Video - Spring Garden 2010. Welcome.
• Not your Grandma's Basil
• Companion Planting
  

Next Friday we'll be talking about encourage children to get involved in gardening. I've got lots of fun ideas and book to share with you!

Got your GrowCookEat post up?:

1. Write a post about gardening on your own blog, don't forget to mention www.goodlifeeats and GrowCookEat so that your readers know where they can learn more about GrowCookEat and gardening. Then, come back here to add the link to your post to the SimplyLinked form below.
2. Don't have a blog? ell us about your garden in comments section of each post so we can all see what you're up to.
3. Let's stay on topic, this isn't an invitation to spam everyone with your blog. If your post doesn't somehow relate to gardening, it will be deleted. Thanks for understanding.

I also wanted to let you know that I've set up a GrowCookEat flickr group for those of you who want to upload and share all the photos of your gardens with each other. You can join the group here.