What's Growing On?

Hiya! Whaddya think of my new blog design? Pretty spiffy, no? Special thanks to Molly at Blessed Little Nest Designs. I love it!

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The garden is in and officially on it's way. Along with all our yearly standbys, we're trying new things and are excited to watch them grow. Here's a little walk through...

We're growing FIVE varieties of squash this year. Zucchini, yellow crookneck, spaghetti, acorn and butternut. I thought it might be a bit much, considering my husband doesn't like squash, but he said I'm pretty good in the kitchen and should be able to make it palatable for him. Did he just say I was good in the kitchen? Somebody write that down!

 

We have TWELVE tomato plants. Twelve. Cherry, black krim, brandywine and some weird pink tomato I though might be neat. Most of them are heirloom romas for canning, sauce making, and seed saving. We lost our first tomato crop to crickets, and the second to frost. This time, we're keeping them!

 

We have strawberries! We've had plants in the ground for two years and we actually have berries this year. Rejoice!

If you have a brown thumb and are afraid to plant anything try arugula. It sprouts overnight and you have a bed full of deliciously lush salad greens in record time. We also planted red sail lettuce and buttercrunch. We've had greens every night for two weeks. Yum.

We've also graduated from "fruit tree enthusiasts" to a full blown mini orchard. In addition to limes, lemons, oranges, pomegranates, nectarines and pecans, we added a fig tree and two more apricot trees. Our apricot tree performed beautifully last year and I'm excited to have three trees. Dried apricots are my favorite!

This is a dragonfruit. It's spiky and ugly and I have no idea what they taste like. But they perform well in the desert so why not. I'll make jam. You can make jam out of anything, right?

What are you planting this year?