With the warmer days of late April come the golden fruit of my loquat tree. You have to work quickly once they start to ripen, bugs and birds snack on the juicy yellowish orbs while they turn in the sun. These are the very first loquats of the season in my back yard. Now I have to keep the big critters from devouring them all before I can cook them down into a jelly or butter format. Sweet and sour notes prevail when raw or cooked. The butter I made last year was put to good use. My friend at Full & Content rounded up recipes for this unusual fruit which will be posted soon!
Posts Tagged ‘garden’
My loquats are showing
Posted in Seasonal, Spring, tagged Austin, food, garden, local, loquat on April 17, 2013| 5 Comments »
Almost Full Size
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, garden, melon, sustainable, Texas on July 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »
A heavy cantaloupe melon from the garden. I hope the other baby melons grow this big!
Lunch Box
Posted in Bits and Bytes, Spring, tagged arugula, basil, food, garden, lunch, radish, salad on June 1, 2012| 2 Comments »
In my lunch box today…
Tomato Basil Soup from Randall’s (Safeway)
Salad:
tomato
zucchini
radish (garden)
basil (garden)
arugula (garden)
peas (garden)
beans (garden)
croutons made from French bread
Italian dressing
It was missing red onion and maybe some cheese. That would make one smashing salad!
What did you have for lunch today?
Garden Produce!
Posted in Bits and Bytes, tagged basil, food, garden, lettuce, sustainable, tomatoes on April 13, 2012| 9 Comments »
Picked ripe from the vine tomato, basil, arugula, and lettuce. A deliciously fresh salad will be my dinner tonight! That little green house is working like magic.
Garden Diva
Posted in Seasonal, Spring, Summer, tagged food, garden, green, house, random on March 27, 2012| 4 Comments »
Hubby surprised me with this portable greenhouse!
I’ve put it to work housing tomato plants from the nursery and my seedlings started in whatever containers and newspaper happened to be waiting to be recycled.
There is such a satisfaction with growing your own food. And I can teach my kids about the different plants, what leaves are edible and that we must wait for the fruits of our labour, quite literally. These pea sprouts have already been living outside for a few weeks now, they have roommates, or dirtmates, of beans, melons, radish, lettuces, pumpkin and hopefully onions. Oh and red chili peppers, too. That must be what the little tree plant is. I didn’t exactly make rows since I have a small raised bed and now the additional space of the green house. There is more order in the green house than the exposed bed of dirt. Small mounds form rows for tomato spouts, beans and peas are between the tomato mounds. Big Brother made his contribution of herbs that are neither in the rows of hills or the valleys between, there are tiny leaves between the stepping stones. Oh well.
The melons, cantaloupe and watermelon, were directly seeded in the dirt floor of the green house. With such a mild winter I took the risk of evading a late frost, daring Mother Nature I guess, I still keep an eye on the forecast just in case I need to use old blankets to cover the house and garden bed. The real threat to our backyard production is heat. The melons are supposed to like warmer weather and give sweeter fruit in return. The remainder of the garden will either bolt and die, or just fry and die. The pot of mint will come back again, it looks like a miniature jungle, it grows thicker with each drop of water it catches.
If the weather is kind, not too hot or dry, I will have a small bounty to cook with. I can’t wait!