I've occasionally found "kale sprouts" (same thing, different brand) at Trader Joe's here. They're divine. They smell unfortunately like brussels sprouts while cooking, but not sulphury when eating. The leaves get crispy like kale chips and the centers are creamy. Good luck with growing them!! Do you think squirrels would eat them? I only grow herbs, peppers and lemons, though the squirrels do try to eat the ornamental pomegranates and get very disappointed..

I've been harvesting basil, and I also have quite a few limes right now, as well as lemons. My winter herbs (parsley and dill) are pretty much over now, and it is difficult to grow them in the summer. I have been trying to get some chocolate Habanero plants started, but the first ones I transplanted did not survive. I do have a few more that I tried to sprout back in March that have been growing very slowly, but I won't transplant them until I am sure they will make it. I have regular Habanero chilies that I bought already started at Home Depot.

I have not planted anything new, except for some bromeliads, orchids, and epiphyllum that I bought in San Diego when I was at the World Bromeliad Conference week before last. I had to transplant a couple of the bromeliads, as they were not in dirt, but the rest were already in pots. I got two new colors of epidendrums: one is all red and the other is all yellow (flowers, that is). I also bought two new hybrid orchids that make fairly small flowers that are interesting colors, and they are cold tolerant enough for me to keep them outdoors all year.

Lars, you're making me nostalgic. Those are the flowers/plants my mother always grew. Though I got labelled weird at camp when I brought an epidendrum on a piece of tree fern to decorate my room.

In addition to the herbs, I also have growing: Hatch Chili Peppers; Jalapinos Peppers; Sweet Banana Peppers; Japanese Eggplant; Potatoes; tomatoes; squashes; cucumbers; Apriums; figs; and citrus. All grow in pots of one size or another.

Basil, oregano, mint, sage, tarragon and more mint for herbs,

Kumquats, grapefruits, oranges and lemons for citrus.

in the actual garden I’m growning honeydew, cherry tomatoes, purple tomatoes, and cantaloupe. I did plant a pepper but it died :(

agmss15, 2 gardens this year sounds very ambitious, especially with limited water on one - wishing you luck and good harvest! Your Hablitzia and Kalettes sound intriguing.

CA Kate, I'm impressed you have so much in pots! Wow!

No vegetable garden for a couple years. Harvesting only herbs: basil, dill, tarragon, chives, mint, oregano, lemon and regular thyme, marjoram, parsley, and rosemary. Sage died and haven't had time to replant. Also 9 garlic were squeezed into the herb garden (soft and hardneck), and harvested (if you can call it that!) 4 scapes.

We have gone from over an acre with something like 7-8 raised beds lined with hardware cloth to a maybe 10x20 area in town.

Last year I co-gardened with a woman who offered to share her large yard. It was a VERY hot year for our area, and I had some severe burns, so I just got a half dozen tomatoes, some green beans and a couple of peppers.

This year we got rid of a massive rose bush that hadn't been cared for in years and was covered in rust, which freed up a decent sized (10x20) area.

We went small with just 3 tomato plants, 2 peppers, 1 japanese eggplant and one Zuk.

We planted a gopher chatterer after seeing some activity in the area and so far so good.

We are already giving zuks to the neighbors and making zuk refrigerator pickles! The tomatoes are 3-4' tall and the others are looking great!

When we bought our new place we were excited that there was a raised bed, only to find that they built it to dump construction rubble in and hide it! GRRRRRRRR.

Now we have to pay someone to dig out all the rubble and replace it with real soil!

Thinking on an asparagus bed for that! Nancy

nancyjane, similar here. Our suburbia yard will possible fit a 10 x 20 foot garden, but I hope to also add a 10 x 10 uncovered garden. Not enough for all I wish to plant, so I'll have to plan wisely. And that construction junk hidden in the raised bed, what a pain! We often find building debris close to the houses when we dig for whatever. Hate it when that happens. Ah the life of a suburbanite!

Yeah, I'm probably going to have to pay someone to dig out the "raised bed" and re-fill it with good soil, but with the 10x20, I think we'll be good to go!

I want to get some asparagus in the raised bed and a few other things.

Being retired, I'm not all that interested in making sauce and all that. Still have frozen sauce from 2 years ago!

Do love fresh veges, though! Nancy

Well, I have 200 asparagus crowns, two raised beds of strwberries, 100+ garlic plants, 36 raspberry plants, two fig trees, three pear trees, a plum tree, a peach tree, 4 apple trees and 2 cherry trees, a couple of gooseberry bushes. The figs/pears/plum just got planted this year, so they are too small to produce. The raspberries are loaded with berries, all small and green, it's a couple of weeks away for those, same for the gooseberries. We ate asparagus several times a week and put some in the freezer, now that's done for the year. Oh, and I did pick rhubarb and send it to a friend because I had no freezer room after putting a whole beef and a hog into the freezer(s).

So far, it's been mizuna and more mizuna, the asparagus, a few strawberries, the garlic scapes and selected thinnings of baby bok choi and bibb lettuce.

Right now I'm growing Red Norland potatoes, Kennebecs, leeks, 8 varieties of tomato, sweet peppers, 6 varieties of hot peppers, aspabroc , brussels sprouts, watermelon, 3 colors of carrots, two colors of beets, okra, cucumbers, zucchini, collards, kale, bok choi, romaine, Bibb lettuce, mizuna, butternut squash, spinach, daikon radish, Blue Hokkaido squash, pink half runner beans, cranberry beans for shelling, green beans, Mirai sweet corn, Pepita pumpkins and three colors of pumpkins for Jack O Lanterns. New to me is the aspabroc, Daikon, and some blue pumpkins called Jarrahdale. Last year was the first year I grew the pepitas and blue Hokkaido (also called Kuri) , and I was impressed with the long keeping ability of the squash, so I kept seeds from them to grow again this year.

South end of garden with 3 Red Delicious apple trees between the south and north sections of garden and two peach trees in front of the barn (which needs paint!)

North garden, containing beans, corn and pumpkins, corn is "knee high" if you use MY knee as a standard, LOL.

Cherries will be ready to start picking this weekend, I think:

And I should have pruned those peach trees when we did the apple trees, because I can't reach the top branches to thin the fruit. There are so many that they'll be small and have less flavor. Quantity is not necessarily quality, as we all know:

Oh, and I do not think that all these "improvements" are improvements at all, except that they've improved the efficiency by which they can gather information and market to us. I'm still struggling with even starting a thread.

Annie

I'm heading more and more towards [potager gardening [(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/potager-gardens-dsbr0-bd~t_29996)as I have such a small place. I have always used basil as an ornamental and herb. Currently, there is 'Opal' basil edging my gardens. I also have three surprise seedlings of some sort of squash. Volunteers. They're really pretty spilling over the concrete edging, large leaves, and the winding tendrils; it got me to thinking how lovely would it be to have my strawberry plants edge in some places, and the flowers on both peppers and tomatoes are lovely... Conversely, my borage that I use purely as an ornamental (très jolie when paired with raspberry flowering butterfly bush, my fuschia colored lobelia, or 'Giant Wine' zinnias), could actually be used as food. Like dcarch does with daylilies. Or the seven foot tall chickory whose cloud of powder blue blooms probably have huge roots. That need to be ground into my favorite "coffee". Interesting thought to me anyhow. I'm increasingly thinking of how I want my garden to be more than pretty, I need to get connected to the earth and why not use it as a dual space. I have been redesigning in my head for next year and deciding the best use of spaces.

"Vegetable use of borage is common in Germany, in the Spanish regions of Aragorn and Navarre, in the Greek island of Crete and in the northern Italian region of Liguria. Although often used in soups, one of the better known German borage recipes is the Green Sauce (Grüne Soße) made in Frankfurt. In Italian Liguria, borage is commonly used as a filling of the traditional pasta ravioli and pansoti. It is used to flavour pickled gherkins in Poland"

Ends up I inherited a cherry tree and a peach tree, so my freezer is packed! Just made both a peace/blueberry pie and a cherry pie for my daughter's bacholorette weekend!

Harvested my few garlic, 9 of them, that I squeezed into the herb garden this year.. this is a softneck. Only planted 4 hardnecks.

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