My Edible Garden

I've been gardening for most of my life and have been a devoted fan of organic gardening the whole time. It just makes so much more sense to work in harmony with Mother Nature than to fight her. Besides which it is better for the planet and better for our bodies. Here you can see what I'm planting and harvesting, with gardening hints and resources thrown in for good measure.

Monday, November 21, 2011

HARVEST MONDAY

bowl gourds
Every Monday, Daphne of Daphne's Dandelions hosts Harvest Monday; a nice little blog hop where gardeners show off what they have harvested during the previous week. I don't always remember to take pictures of everything, besides some of it would be boring. After all, one batch of baby lettuce looks a lot like all the others.

So this week there are these three bowl gourds. I was surprised the seeds sprouted at all, they were about 5 years old, one sprouted and grew quite large. The top gourd in the photo was the first to form, before I went on vacation. While I was gone another one came along and then the last one after I got home. I'm pretty sure the first one will be ok, but the other two are still pretty green, so I'm not sure they are going to dry out well enough, since I planted these fairly late in the season.

Drying Nepeta and baby lettuce
Early on in the week I harvested 5 ounces (wet weight) of catmint, aka catnip and Nepeta. This herb is a nice tea mint and of course if you have cats it will make them crazy ;-)  And of course some baby lettuces.

baby lettuce with Easter Egg radishes








Yesterday I was harvesting lettuce and realized I had also planted some Easter Egg radishes in that bed. The plants didn't really look that big, but when I poked in the dirt around them, there were some radishes.

Harvest totals this week:

Catmint  5 ounces
Lettuce  30 ounces (1.875 pounds)
Radish   1/2 ounce
Posted by Mary Hysong at 8:51 AM
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10 comments:

  1. Norma ChangNovember 21, 2011 at 9:28 AM

    Bowl gourd, can you eat the young gourd? What do you do with the dried mature gourds?

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  2. Mary HysongNovember 21, 2011 at 12:50 PM

    I'm not sure if the young bowl gourds are edible or not; I know there are different gourds that you can eat when they are young. Otherwise let them dry, use as containers or make them into bird houses ;-)

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  3. kitsapFGNovember 21, 2011 at 7:29 PM

    The bowl gourds look very intersting. What is the growth habit of the plants? Sprawling? Upright bush? Or a vining climber?

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  4. Doyu ShoninNovember 21, 2011 at 8:17 PM

    LOVE the bowl gourds!

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  5. LizNovember 22, 2011 at 3:17 AM

    Those bowl gourds look beautiful - I've never thought of making tea from catmint - interesting idea.

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  6. My Urban GardensNovember 22, 2011 at 1:56 PM

    Those bowl gourds look really cool! What do you hope to do with them?

    ~Lynn

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  7. MacNovember 22, 2011 at 11:07 PM

    The bowl gourds look nice, are you planning to make them into bowls? I would love to grow gourds, too bad I don't have any artistic gene in me to turn them into beautiful decorative containers.

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  8. Mary HysongNovember 22, 2011 at 11:58 PM

    Thanks everyone I plan to do simple things with these bowl gourds this time and look up fancier things for the future. The easiest thing is probably just make birdhouses ;-)

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  9. Malay-Kadazan girlNovember 23, 2011 at 2:41 PM

    Oh I like that bowl gourd! Would be nice for the baby bird that we have to babysit at the moment. That baby kept on falling from the nest. The nest his father built was not sturdy enough. Unexpectedly we adopted a bird family in our garden.

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  10. Ruth Cox aka abitosunshineNovember 25, 2011 at 4:37 PM

    The bowl gourds are awesome! I wish I had a green thumb!

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