The tomatoes have arrived!

This is today's harvest.  The tomatoes have officially arrived.  There are at least twice this many on the vines that are still orange and twice that many that are still green.

Even though there are tons of tomatoes, I am concerned that my tomato plants are in distress.  First, I forgot that I was watering the plants and left the water on for 2 hours.  That turned a couple plants yellow.  They seem to be recovering though.  Then we had a heat wave this week.  The plants definitely struggled through that.  The grape tomato plant is so huge that it is breaking and leaves are dying.  But it is still producing so many tomatoes that I'm just letting it do it's thing. Next year, I'll give the tomatoes much better supports.  Some of the Early Bird tomatoes are getting this weird gray patch on the bottom of the fruit (see below) and the Mountain variety has these weird translucent patches on lots of the fruit (see below).  I have no idea what either of those are from. 

I love having so much fresh stuff from the garden.  For dinner tonight we put some turkey burgers and yellow zucchini on the grill.  Then I chopped up some just picked tomatoes and a cucumber with some red onion and Italian parsley.  So fresh.  So yummy!

Oh, and here's the pumpkin update.  It's doing fantastic!

No new pumpkins yet, but this one looks pretty healthy.  I wonder how long I keep it on the vine now that it's turning orange?  I guess I have some research to do!

First tomatoes and confused cucumbers

My tomato plants have gotten too big for their britches.  I learned a big lesson this year.  My tomato plants will need lots of support and more room next year.  I am starting to get ripe tomatoes now.  The yellow grapes are delicious.  The other ones are still just starting to get orange.

The cucumbers are doing great, but I just found these 2 hiding.  They had gotten tangled in their own vines and came out a little funky.  And the yellow zucchini parade continues. 

Today I will start prepping another area in our yard.  We have lemon trees that are on an eroding little hill.  We are going to use the landscaping ties from the garden to create a tiered retaining wall.  Then I will have a whole new area to plant.  I still haven't decided what will go in those little areas.  I would really like to have an herb garden, but herbs haven't worked so well for me.  It may end up being an area for flowers.  We'll see.  Here's the before picture.

Detox and Green Smoothies

This week I have decided to go raw in order to hit the reset button on my allergies.  Since Memorial Day weekend, my life has been super busy, stressful, hectic, and fun!  As a result, ever since then I have had hives.  We went camping and our routine went out the window from there.  I had four weekends in a row where I didn't have time to do my Sunday shopping and food prep for the week.  It got so bad that my hubby and I even ended up ordering pizzas for dinner a couple nights.

It is very easy to stay away from my most reactive allergies when I am only eating raw fruits and vegetables.  It gives my body a chance to calm and reset.  Summer is a great time to do this because the warm weather makes me crave fresh fruit and veggies anyways. 

This is the fourth time that I have gone raw.  The first time was 6 years ago.  I started with a 28 day cleanse and felt so good that I stayed raw for 9 months.  The second and third times lasted about 3 weeks each.  Each time I have scoured the internet looking for blogs and articles about the raw lifestyle seeking encouragement and support for the drastic change.  Each time I learn a little more about what works for people and what doesn't.  This time everywhere I searched people were talking about Green Smoothies.  I can't imagine that it's a new craze that I had never seen before in my years of learning about raw foods.  I guess this time I was just ready for the information.  Must be, because I LOVE my Green Smoothies!!!!

They are so refreshing and delicious!  Here is what I made this morning.  It's my favorite yet!

lemon (without rind)
frozen peaches
apple (without core)
slice ginger
spinach
spring mix

Ok I admit, it doesn't look so hot.  But YUM YUM!

Best raw zucchini salad ever!

I'm getting about 2-3 zucchinis a day now.  I've had to get creative with recipes. This is a raw zucchini salad that is delicious!

Recipe: 
Thinly slice 2 medium zucchini (mine are yellow) I used the slicer on my cheese grater.
Thinly slice 6 mini peppers (red, yellow, orange)
Thinly slice 1/4 of a large red onion
Chop 2 roma tomatoes.  (Put 1 in the salad, save the other)
Chop 1 clove of garlic
Put remaining chopped tomatoes with chopped garlic into a slap chopper to pulverize tomatoes.
Add to salad including juices.
Add 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
Add salt & pepper to taste.

Let marinate for 30 minutes to an hour.
YUM YUM!

Bolting lettuce, incredible squash, and tons of green tomatoes!

Summer is in full effect and apparently it is too warm for the lettuce.  My novice eyes were very impressed when I saw the lettuce burst up 2 feet high.  But the leaves taste really bitter.  I learned from a gardener at the County Fair that my lettuce has bolted.  It's time to tear it down, chop it up, and throw it in the compost.  Oh well, I got a couple good salads out of it.  But look how beautiful it is!

The squash is amazing!  Turns out I planted yellow zucchini.  It tastes just like zucchini, only it's yellow.  I have been putting zucchini in everything I can imagine.  It grows so fast you can almost watch it grow before your eyes.  I have to check it daily or else the fruit will get too big.  The first pumpkin fruit has appeared.  I'm fascinated by this.  That means it will grow all summer and then be ready for harvest in the fall.  Oh my!  This might be one heck of a pumpkin.  My sister told me that you can put a piece of wood underneath the fruit so that it doesn't sit on the wet soil.  I'm gonna give it a try.

This is a gorgeous eggplant flower.   The eggplant has started to bloom all over.  I'm a little nervous that I planted it too close to the zucchini (which has turned into a monster plant).  I LOVE eggplant so I can't wait to see what we get out of this plant.

Tomatoes:  The tomato plants are enormous.  The yellow grape tomato is literally 6 feet tall, but it's fallen because I didn't have it supported well enough.  There are so many little green tomatoes.  It's like watching water boil.  I can't wait until they ripen!

Creole Pork....delicious!

My new recipe for the week was creole pork.  The recipe couldn't be simpler.  I mixed together the rub, chopped the veggies, and pan-fried the pork.  Simple as that!  It was awesome and very inexpensive.   I switched the recipe up some to work with what I had.  I used pork shoulders (on sale this weekend), organic mini grape tomatoes that I found at the 99 cent store, and fresh squeezed lemon juice from our trees outside (instead of lime juice). 

Now I'm itching to have people over for a dinner party, just so I can serve this.  It's so pretty on the plate and soooooo easy.

Getting so big and first harvest!

I'm so proud of my little garden!  It has really exploded.  If things continue, we will soon have a beautiful harvest of tomatoes, zucchini, tomatillos, and cucumbers!  I guess I should have listened to the recommended spacing, but I had no idea that they would all do so well!

Today we harvested the first cucumber.  It was about 7 inches and soooo yummy! 

I transplanted the pumpkin plants finally.  They didn't take the transfer very well, but I'm hoping that they perk up and take off like the rest of the plants have.

So far, the sonar gopher repeller is working really well.  I stuck it right in the middle of the tomatoes, in the hole that was left by the one plant the gophers took down.  The three lettuce plants that hadn't been kidnapped by gophers are now growing undisturbed.  I even felt confident enough to plant some more lettuce in that same bed.