Update on "my Vegetable Garden"

This is taken form the window today. It looks like just our yard. I hate weeds and I can't keep up with them. I think if I do the weeding all day un-interrupted within a few days, this thing should be clean. Sad looking garden of mine.

I Harvested some Pak Choy

Some of my Pak Choy are having flowers already but they are still very tiny. I could use the seeds for next year, and I'm glad they are having flowers. Sad because, this is my very first harvest and it's only enough for myself.



I cooked this with some water, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and oyster sauce. DH actually ate two raw leaves and he told me it tasted like grass. I was hoping to get more from it but since we had so much cold temperature they did not thrive well.

I only cut some leaves from the bunch. That is how my mother harvest them back home. We only take the largest leaves or the oldest and save the young ones for later. I sure miss Asian vegetables this year. I don't hardly have any :)

The Weeding Begun

I could not stand it any longer. See I started weeding yesterday. I could have done bigger than this but DC can not leave me alone. Every time I started getting into it they would call me from the window. I want this, I want that, so and so is touching me/don't want me to play with/I need you to do this for me/are you done yet and so on. I get leave the inside of our house and they are stressing me so much and I decided to stop pulling weeds.

This is not even 1/4 of the garden. My hands are hurting because it is so hard pulling those weeds. I have to loosen up the soil before I can take the weeds out.

My Vegetable Garden @ Present

Bok Choi

Rabi Broccoli

Regular Potatoes and sugar snap peas

I think these are carrots

These I still don't know what

Can you see how much weeds I got in this garden. We had so much rain, and this is what happened, dried crack/pack and very hard to weeds garden. From very muddy, now very dry packed. The weeds grows faster than my vegetables. I'm not really sure how much vegetables I can harvest this year.

These are my sweet potatoes, they are getting bigger everyday, well at least bigger than the weeds. I put some stakes for the extra sugar snap peas (not in the picture) and my long yard beans. Hopefully they thrive in this weather, too wet, too cold at night for a summer.

Using Peppermint

We will be starting a herb garden next spring. We will be covering some part of the yard with black plastic to kill the weeds there and hopefully the herbs grow first before the weeds comes back. I will be using fresh herbs with my cooking starting next year, I can't wait. Anyhow, here are something about peppermint.

Peppermint is a type of mint. Normally one simply uses the leaves, either fresh or dried. The leaves have the best flavor if harvested just before the plant blooms. Fresh leaves are good in iced teas, lemonade, fruit salad, cucumber salad and so on. Dried leaves can be used in Middle Eastern recipes and tea as well as in baking.

Borrowed online image

To dry, cut the mint near the base of each stem, tie the stems into bundles using rubber bands at the cut ends. Then hook the rubber bands on bent paper clips and use those as hooks to hang the bundles--hook them onto an ordinary coat hanger, for instance. Hang them in a cool, dark, dry, well ventilated spot until crispy. Then remove the leaves from the stems and store in airtight packages such as jars or zipper bags, again in a cool, dark, dry location. Make sure there is no condensation in the container--that means it is not dry enough yet.

Going on Vacation

How about your vegetable garden? Not to worry, here are some tips to keep them safe.

To keep your vegetable garden in good shape while you're on summer vacation, pick mature or nearly mature vegetables before you leave. Water the garden deeply and then mulch with grass clippings, hay, or straw.

The Fence is Up

DH came home yesterday while the kids and I are outside. I asked him to put the fence up because most of my seeds are sprouting out. Youngest DS keeps on walking inside plus my sugar peas needed something to climb. There are so much weeds growing already but my seed sprouts are still smaller than them. I wish they grow faster, but we all know they don't.

Patriotic Potato Salad

Show your patriotic colors this 4th of July with a red, white, and blue potato salad. Harvest new potatoes of 'Red Pontiac', 'Katahdin', and 'All Blue' now, gently digging around potato plants, taking 2 to 3 spuds per hill.

Top EC Droppers for June