dinsdag 4 juni 2013

Baby eggplants!



My eggplant is growing new fruit! I'm so proud, because I was really worried for a while. The flowers kept turning brown and no new fruit would appear. I did buy it with some fruit already on it, so I could be sure I was getting some eggplants for my trouble, but it's so nice to see that with a few sunny warm days it's starting to grow fruit. The climate isn't perfect for them here, but the other eggplants are growing, so I'm sure these will too. But for now they're just so cute! I just wanna eat them up! Oh no, wait...

maandag 3 juni 2013

Garden update!

I've had some good luck in the garden and some bad luck, let's start with the bad stuff first and then I'll show you the pictures of the good stuff!

First of all, I haven't made the garden bed out of the pallet yet. I got started with it, but I just can't bring myself to finish it. I am procrastinating like crazy on it, even though I know it should be easy.
Second of all, I planted some rapini seeds (broccoli rape, 'raapstelen' in Dutch), and although the seeds sprouted well enough, after that they withered and died quite quickly. I read just now that they should be kept relatively dry, so I think that's where I went wrong. I still have some more seeds, maybe I'll try again soon.
Third of all, I have snail damage on my strawberry plant. They completely ate some leaves, but it hasn't been getting worse, so I guess they left again. Or something, I don't know. Maybe the damage will show up on the picture, we'll see later.
And lastly, there was a hail storm here two weeks ago, and I had some hail damage on my plants. I didn't know what it was at first and I was afraid it was something bad, but I showed it to some organic farmers working on the garden at the school where I work and they said it was fine, just some hail damage. So that was a relieve!

And now on to the pictures! I made some changes to my terrace, I got some fencing because I wanted to protect my plants from the elements, the fencing provides at least a little bit of shade and some protection from the wind. And also it keeps me from seeing my horrible neighbor every time I sit outside. He literally threatened to kill my dog if I keep him off the leash one more time, even though my dog doesn't harm anyone or anything. The bad side of living on a shared terrace, I guess. There's always someone that you don't get along with. (But god, I hate that guy.)
Anyway! Here are some pictures of my garden, first you'll see the flowers for the bees that are really starting to grow, the bees are all over my lavender plants right now, and once these flowers start to bloom they'll have even more reason to visit my garden!


The next pictures are of my Indian cress and of the chives that are in bloom. I didn't know chives got these pretty purple flowers! 


And here's some pictures of my tomato plants, the one in the orange pot are cherry tomatoes, in the white pot I put roma tomatoes. It's fun to me to see how different in shape the two plants are becoming! The cherry tomato is getting much higher, while the roma tomato is growing a little wider, not even reaching the top of the bamboo stick I put next to it.



 And lastly, my strawberries! They're really doing well. My terrace gets a lot of sunlight and the temperature there is always some degrees higher than the actual temperature. In the summer it gets really hot, but for now the strawberries are loving it! Some of them are already turning red, I bet if the weather keeps up I can harvest some next week or the week after. The first (actual!) fruit of my labor, I'm so excited! These pictures are actually two days old, and already they have more color than on these pictures. It's great!


How is your garden doing?

Organic veggies from city farm Caetshage

For the past two weeks I've tried out the weekly organic veggie box from our city's farm, Caetshage. We don't call it CSA in the Netherlands, but I guess that's what it is. I've been eating the same vegetables over and over again, and while there's nothing wrong with tomatoes and zucchini and red peppers because they're yummy and my favorite, as a vegetarian I should have more diversity in my diet. So that's where the veggie box comes in!
Last week I had lettuce, snow peas and fresh garlic (such great flavor, I just stir-fried it with some pasta), this week I have carrots, Belgian endive and bok choy. So far I'm loving having to make a meal out of the stuff I have, it tastes great and I haven't had to buy extra vegetables from the supermarket yet.
I actually got the box for 6 weeks as a birthday present from my friends, but so far I think I'll keep it on after that!
How about you, do you get vegetables in season from the farmer's market, or do you have a CSA like me? Or do you still buy them in the supermarket? Let me know!

Later today I'll try to write an update about my garden, so you can see how my plants are doing!