Bad Hippie, No Patchouli!

As a first-time and extremely green gardener (and I mean "green" in the sense of "I-don't-know-what-the-hell-I'm-doing-out-back-in-my-raised-beds"), I like to celebrate the small successes of my veggie crop. And by small, I do mean small. Behold! My first harvest of carrots and onions:

Yes, that's a picture of teeny-tiny carrots and some onion-looking things. They are small. But they were certainly delicious, although there really wasn't enough of them to go around. So I ate the carrots raw, and put the onions on top of a salad for HWSRN.

Impressive, no? We have had a most excellent harvest of lettuce, though, as well as chard. And my bush beans are going bonkers -- the leafy plant parts are huge, and the actual beans are starting to grow. My zucchini is starting to flower, and my heirloom chocolate bell peppers have tiny little peppers on their stems. The tomatoes, on the other hand, can suck it. No blossoms yet. Everyone else that I talk to seems to have green tomatoes growing and ripening on their tomato vines. Hmmm...I think I detect a bit of garden envy setting in. I did, however, manage to kill my strawberry plants, I think. Maybe. At least, I know that I killed all of the plant's runners. But I cut everything back to the crown, and can see a bit of new growth starting to form. I guess I'll just have to let this experiment run it's course before I know if the strawberries survive, Gloria Gaynor style.

Other hippie-like endeavors for the summer have included buying super cheap zucchini at the Farmer's Market, shredding it, and freezing it in Ziploc baggies for the winter. (Yes, I will regret this move if my zucchini plants actually produce zucchini this year.) Then there was the eight quarts of strawberries I picked for freezer jam:

Holy shit! My jam actually turned into jam. I'm a rock star!

Another four quarts of strawberries got drawn and quartered for winter, too. Earth mamas, unite!

Yesterday, I decided to pick local cherries -- 20 odd pounds of them. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.) Disclaimer: four pounds were for a friend. I got a sour cherry cake out of the buckets I lugged home, as well as 12 jars of fancy cherry jam that DID NOT gel. Damn you, David Lebowitz! Your no-recipe cherry jam recipe promised success. Looking on the bright side, however, I now have some pretty fancy cherry ice cream topping to gift at Christmas. Although, the jam is pretty good on toast, too. Runny, but good.

There's another baggie of frozen sour cherries in the freezer for winter baking, and once I get my lazy butt around to it, there will be a baggie or two of black cherries to freeze as a yogurt topping. All in all, not a bad haul (so far) for an inexperienced gardener.

Although, I gotta say -- I'm starting to realize that going back to the land means investing in a chest freezer. Especially if you plan on storing 18 jars of freezer jam in with your other frozen stuff. It's getting a little crowded, but pleasantly so, in my regular freezer. But it's sure gonna be a challenge to fit all of the blueberry and raspberry jam I want to make later in the season in there with the other stuff, you know?