Garden E032009

Memorial Day has passed and we are safe from frost. My mom and I went to a roadside nursery to gather more vegetables. We picked up three kinds of tomatoes; beefmaster, better boy, and grape. We’re going to have more tomatoes than we know what to do with. We gad some trouble finding red bell peppers. There must have been a mad rush because we only found a handful of Red Beauties hidden amongst the Gypsy Peppers. I grabbed two of each kind of pepper along with hot Hungarian Peppers. We looked over the beans and couldn’t decided whether to get Pole Beans or Bush Beans. “What’s the difference?” my mother wondered aloud. I shrugged, but a nice man in the shopping in the same aisle explained that Pole Beans grow up and need to be trained to a fence while Bush Beans grow low to the ground like a bush. We decided to go with the bush beans. They sounded like less work especially since we are also growing cucumbers and sweet peas. Both plants require a fence to climb on.

We wandered over to the herb section and I was excited to find Summer Savory. Now I have all the ingredients for Herbes de Provence, French herbs mix of lavender, thyme, rosemary, and of course savory. The herb mix is amazing on roasted vegetables with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. It’s also great rubbed on or stuffed into lamb. We also came across a curry plant. I had never seen one before. It was so aromatic. We rubbed some between our fingers and the strong sweet smell burst into the air. The aroma stayed on our hands for hours afterwards. We didn’t buy any. I’m not really sure how to cook with it. We tasted the leaves of all the different kinds of mint; orange mint, pineapple mint, I tasted a menthol leaf and it was disgusting, I cleaned my pallet the amazing taste of a chocolate mint leaf.

We bought two red raspberry bushes and a strawberry plant. It had one bright red strawberry on it that was eaten by either a bird or a squirrel while waiting to be planted on our picnic table. We’re going to have to find a large menacing plastic owl to watch over our garden perimeter.