I'm new here, but I suspect you'll be hearing from me a lot. I'm so happy about my garden this year. I'm passionate about my edible landscaping. Almost everything I grow can be eaten, and believe me, I love eating stuff I have grown. I have the usual tomatoes, peppers, beans, beets, carrots, onions, etc., growing in my garden although my plots look quite bare as it is the beginning of the season. I find this time of the year both exciting and depressing.
This year, I am most excited about eggplants and sweet potatoes. I have never liked eggplants, but since my roommate likes them, I decided to jump in with both feet and get a variety of them in the hopes I find some that I like. As soon as the harvesting of them begins, I plan to spend a lot of time experimenting in the kitchen. I love fruits and vegetables and it has always bothered me that I don't like eggplants. Actually, I also don't like that common yellow squash, so if that had been my roommate's favorite, he would be on his own.
Fortunately, I do love eating spaghetti squash and mine are now growing. Yippee!
I am very passionate about sweet potatoes but haven't spent nowhere near enough time discovering new recipes. Most of the time I just eat it with some butter and brown sugar or honey. I just ordered some potato growing bags and my sweet potato slips from www.tatorman.com and can't wait until they get here.
Eating salads completely changed for me when I stopped using salad dressings and began to use just olive oil. I put a lot of herbs from my garden into my salads. I like spinach and arugula salads with a lot of fresh basil leaves. I am growing sweet basil, boxwood basil, cinnamon basil, dark opal basil, and Romanesco basil this year. I also put chives, parsley, oregano, thyme and tarragon in my salads. So yummy.
As you can tell, I love love love fresh herbs. I actually didn't even know how much I liked fresh herbs until I started growing them myself. "Fresh" herbs from the grocery store are definitely not the same. Maybe because I don't put any chemicals in my garden. I grow some herbs because they are great companion plants. Other herbs because they are great with tea and honey, like stevia, mints, bee balm, lemon balm, german chamomile, feverfew, rose hips, and whatever else I can find. My entire backyard was used mainly for growing herbs, with some also growing in the front yard.
I also love berries. Strawberries, fall gold raspberries, blackberries, elderberries, and grapes. (Although not a big fan of the red raspberries I have tried. They are just okay to me.) I have some gojiberry seeds I plan to plant and grow in large pots. I have not been able to garden for a few years, so I unfortunately forgot quite a bit, but since last spring I'm trying to get caught up again. Thanks to having a roommate that can do the heavy lifting and digging for me.
My favorite flowers are daylilies, also edible and many don't know that. I don't happen to have any now, but hope to soon. As you can tell, I have a lot of interests in the garden, so if you are around, I am often poking in the forums when I am not outside. I read just about all the forums because that is how I have learned what types of stuff to do "next" year.
