Vegetable Garden Week 28 - September 17

Even though I've been MIA on the garden, it has done well! We have gotten SO many peppers! I think it's because it was such a hot summer. We had habaneros (the orange peppers), Scotch Bonnets (the red), Thai Birds Eye (the little red and green), and jalapenos (the green). The habaneros and Scotch Bonnets are super hot so I've been making hot sauce. This Jean-Georges Scotch Bonnet hot sauce is amazing! It's no spicier than tobasco so don't be scared. I highly recommend it - it's a beautiful orange color and the flavor is addicting. 

The garden is dwindling, but we're still getting peppers and tomatoes so that's great. I'm definitely getting the end of summer blues, but hoping this lovely warm, September weather continues! 

Tomatoes

It's peak tomato season! Go out to the farmers market or farm stand and buy them and eat them before tomato season ends! With a little mozzarella, basil, balsamic, and olive oil you can have the most amazing salad. I <3 p="" tomatoes="">

And these are from our garden, which did really well this year! We had tomoatoes, snap peas, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans, strawberries, eggplant, and more hot peppers than ever. Keep an eye out for a Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce - coming to the blog soon and it's incredible. 

Vegetable Garden Week 9 - May 7

We've got radishes! They're just itty bitty radishes, but I needed to cull them a bit so it was great to have a little something to nibble on. The first harvest is always fun. This is why radishes are great - you get them so early compared to everything else! The French Breakfast radishes (the long and skinny ones) were much milder than the regular round red radishes which had a lot of spiciness. I made a batch of radish butter which is a really great hors d'oeuvres on some crackers. 

Garden Plan

Even though this weather is horrendous, I'm excited to go out and garden this weekend. This is the plan for the two big garden beds (the two little beds are already planted with snap peas, lettuce, radishes, strawberries, and zucchini). I'm hoping we'll have a few minutes where the rain lets up so I can run out and plant tomatoes, eggplants, and hot peppers. I bought a few at the farmers market on Wednesday and am planning to get a few more today. I'm searching for Black Cherry Tomatoes - I think they're my favorite. So sweet and tart and delicious. This will also be our last weekend out in Long Island pre-baby so I need to get as much done as possible!

Not much more room in there!!

Vegetable Garden Week 7 - April 24

The garden is looking good! I was worried that after the cold snap after planting these seeds that they might suffer, but so far they're looking very healthy! The snap peas are already almost six inches high, the radishes are growing like crazy and there are little red bulbs just under the dirt, and the lettuce looks very thick and healthy so far. 

Vegetable Garden Week 4 - April 3

The seeds are sprouting! Even though last weekend was cold and windy and awful, the warm weather in the past few weeks has been good for the garden. We have little sprouts for the snappeas, lettuce, and radishes. 

When we're out next weekend I'll probably have to do a little culling to make sure there aren't too many too close together. Yay spring!

Vegetable Garden Week 1 - March 13

What a beautiful weekend! It was so warm and springy - the perfect time to start the garden. My sweet husband did all the heavy lifting since I can't really be lugging topsoil bags or turning soil at this point. 

July 26 - Vegetable Garden Week 17

The garden is looking pretty sad. The deer have eaten almost everything. Even though we have about 13 tomato plants, we do not have any tomatoes - just stalks of where the flowers and baby tomatoes once were. So depressing! I think we're getting a deer fence so maybe next summer we'll have better luck. The above picture was our whole haul - a cucumber, some basil, and a handful of green beans. 

At least it was a beautiful weekend!

July 11 - Vegetable Garden Week 15

The garden has seen better days. The deer are out of control. They've been eating everything, and things they haven't eaten in the past like snap peas, tomatoes, and even hot pepper plants. 

June 12 - Vegetable Garden Week 11

This is belated, but last weekend we had snap peas and lots of lettuce!

A salad with super freshly picked lettuce is just so much better and tastier and crunchier. It's the best. The adorable container up there with the snap peas is ceramic and from my friend Kara and will get so much use this summer for snap peas, grape tomatoes, and other little garden items. Thanks, Kara!

May 31 - Vegetable Garden Week 9

The garden is great. The snap peas are about 2 feet high, the tomatoes are growing well, and we actually have some strawberries growing. The mulch is keeping the weeds down and it looks nicer. We're still getting radishes, but I'm looking forward to snap peas and all the other good veggies. 

May 16 - Vegetable Garden Week 7

Everything is growing! It's so nice to have radishes because we've already gotten to harvest a few and eat them. This is great because most things (tomatoes, beans, eggplants, cucumbers, etc) won't be ready for a few months. We put down mulch to try to keep down weeds and hold in moisture (we didn't do it last year) so hopefully that will make life easier in the long run.

April 26 - Vegetable Garden Week 4

Even though it has been frigid lately, things are growing! The radishes, snap peas, and lettuce have all sprouted.

April 4 - Vegetable Garden Week One

We got a later start on the garden than usual because of our Asia trip, but may have anyway because of the frigid weather we've been having. (Usually we plant the peas around St. Patrick's Day.) We loaded up the beds with fresh top soil and compost and cleaned out some grass etc that had grown over the winter. We planted the seeds you can plant before the danger of frost has passed - snap peas, lettuce, radishes. 

Zucchini Carbonara

I got out to Southampton Friday night and we didn't feel like going to the grocery store, but needed dinner. If you have eggs, bacon, parm, and onion (and pasta), you can make it. I went out to the garden and grabbed some zucchini and parsley to lighten it up a little. It was so easy and really tasty, and the zucchini gives it a bit of a summery bent - and it's a good way to use up zucchini if you have a lot.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

5 strips of bacon, chopped into 1/4 inch pieces

2 small zucchini, cut into match sticks

1 large leek (or onion) thinly sliced

1 clove garlic, minced

1/3 cup parm or pecorini

2 eggs

small handful of parsley, chopped

salt and pepper

Pasta

Garden - Week 21, August 2

Look at all that good stuff! We'll be eating delicious vegetarian meals all week.

Garden - Week 20, July 29

We put up a fence! The deer have been getting progressively worse in Southampton and have started really attacking our garden. It's so sad to see plants just chomped off and missing little baby tomatoes. The whole process took about an hour, if even. I really hope it works! There are still some more steps - like pulling up the grass inside and replacing it with gravel or mulch or something. Any suggestions? Is anything weed resistant?

It's actually super low profile. It was hard for me to get a picture where you can really see it. We're thinking of tying some bring orange ribbon or something to parts of it so people (and animals) don't walk right into it.

Pretty Summer Salad

This is so simple but so fresh and pretty. We had our first cherry tomatoes in the garden and some cucumbers and nasturtiums. You can eat nasturtiums and they add such a nice pop of color and fancy touch to a salad. I just sliced up cucumbers, topped them with sliced tomatoes, ripped up some nasturtium petals and sprinkled them around, sprinkled on salt, drizzled balsamic and olive oil, then topped with a whole nasturtium. Yum!

Garden - Week 19, July 19

Garden is good! That's our harvest - Swiss chard, radishes, cherry bomb pepper, snap peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, and fairy tale eggplant. 

Here are the peas. We took them down right after because they were on their way out. 

The fairy tale eggplants are going well. 

There's some rhubarb, too!

Garden - Week 17, July 4

The garden is great! Still collecting peas and now we have beans! The purple beans are the most prolific, then we have a few wax beans and green beans. They are so fresh and firm and crunchy. We also have swiss chard.

I at the first little yellow tomato. The rest are still green but I'm getting excited. There was also a teeny tiny eggplant growing.