Pickled Jalapenos, Bean Sprouts, Chicken Breast and Basil Butter

I was out checking the garden this morning and decided that the jalapenos need to be harvested.  The leaves were looking pretty bad.  The leaves were starting to yellow and curl.  I've never pickled jalapenos before, so back to the Internet I went.  I found a recipe at gimmedelicious.com called "Quick 10 Minute Pickled Jalapeno.  Since this was my first time with this recipe, I read  the reviews and followed it exactly

I took the precaution of wearing gloves.  I keep a box on hand just for situations like this. I went ahead and got all my brining ingredients together and as they came to a boil I decided to de-seed most of the jalapenos.  I'm really glad that I did.  The jalapenos are nice and spicy.  My husband will love them. They have a great flavor.

 

 While I had been harvesting and chopping jalapenos, I had some bean sprouts that I had placed in the sun to green up.  My husband and I really enjoy these in our wraps and salads.  While I was waiting for the jalapenos to do their thing in the brine I 'cleaned' the sprouts and jarred them for the week ahead.

 When I have the opportunity, I try to get a head start on meals for the upcoming week.  I had one chicken breast in the freezer and  decided to roast it for this weeks salads or wraps.   After I pounded my chicken breast thin,   I took my home grown  dehydrated basil, added parsley, garlic, onion powder, poultry seasoning, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, seasoned both sides of the chicken breast.  I  place the chick in parchment paper and roasted in the toaster over at 375 for 40 mins.  Of course I couldn't resist a  sample bite.  Hmm, delicious!

I decided I would make sauteed zucchini and squash to go with the broiled pork chops I'm making tonight.  So I went back out to the garden to harvest a little bit of basil to make a garlic and basil butter to go with it. Yum, I can't wait to start cooking.

If you have any favorite recipes or uses for fresh herbs,  leave me a comment below!



                             

Mother's Day in the Vegetable Garden

                                                                                                                                                                                   It's been a couple of weeks since I've really been able to get out in the garden.  Last weekend we had the pleasure of having the grand kids over ( 6 yrs and 4 yrs) , so all my free time went into to them.  We spent the day making butterfly magnets for Mommy for Mother's Day and a bouquet of flowers made out of egg cartons, and of course the Grand daughter had to 'steal' one of my stones for her garden.  I didn't mind a bit and was thrilled to share with her.  Unfortunately I didn't think to get any pictures but we had a great time.  

      We managed to get some rain this past week, so I knew I was going to need to put more DE in the garden.  I planned on making time on Mother's Day to give the garden some much needed attention.  Right away I started seeing troublemakers .

See Mr. Stink Bug?

 I have been wanting to play around with some home remedy pest control and this was the perfect opportunity.  I found this website ( http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com/natural-pest-control-remedies.html ) and decided to try out the apple cider and vinegar recipe, as that is all I had on hand at the time.  I'll being making a trip to the store tomorrow for some more home remedies  

   I used 1/2 a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to half a liter of water.  I'm not sure if this is going to help a lot but at least I feel better 'thinking' I'm doing some good. 

   I took this time to really inspect the plants, checking under the leaves and really taking a good look at the stems and stalks. 

   As I did this I made sure to use spray the under side of the leaves with the apple cider solution.  I felt very confident that I had used the spray to the best I could, so now we'll see what happens

                                   

Early Girl Tomato's

   In the mean time, I decided that one of my tomato cages were leaning to close to another, so I zip tied it to the trellis, hoping that it will help anchor it away from the other tomatoes.  

Mr. Stink bug on the
cucumber plant

   I waited a few hours and went back outside to check on things and as I suspected Mr. Stink Bug was still hanging around!  I'll be putting the DE out tonight so he won't be around for long!  

   While I'm waiting on it to get late enough for that I'll be checking out different websites on good and bad bugs.

  Here's one of my favorite websites:

https://www.fix.com/blog/common-garden-pests-and-how-to-get-rid-of-them/ 

The Pepper on the left is the
Chocolate,  right is an Orange
and in the middle is a Jalapeno
Pepper

3 Hard boiled eggshells that I
crushed and then sprinkled in'
the garden.

 I had read in my research that eggshells when crushed and sprinkled on the top soil  in the garden, slugs, cut worms and other insects are repelled by they're sharp edges.
  Since I boiled eggs for Potato Salad (part of tonight's dinner) I thought I'd give it a try.
 My peppers occasionally drop flowers or leaves so I sprinkled around the base of all 3 pepper plants and decided to put some around the green beans as well.

Crushed eggshells on the base'
of the green beans

So far so good with the Tomato's.They look beautiful to me.  I can't wait for those Grape tomato's to ripen. 

 The one on the left is an Early Girl Tomato.  Top right is a Grape (Tami G) and bottom right is Rutgers Select 

 I also found some time to give my mini roses some much needed attention.  I re potted them a few weeks ago and gave them some fresh dirt, but a lot of blooms have died off.  I spent a little time pruning off the dead blooms.  They look so much better!

  I'm getting ready to break up my cactus.  When I first received it, there was just the one part in the middle.  It's since sprouted 3 arms. Since the last rains the arm on the right has 3 raised bumps.  I'm not sure if it's getting ready to bloom again or if it's going to sprout more arms.  The blooms are beautiful and only happen at night.

This is the last of the Lettuce in the Aero Garden!  

Tonight we'll clean it up and see what to next with it!

Lot's of surprises for the end of April

 I try really hard to keep an eye on the garden.    I consider myself a 'newbie' to gardening so I go out everyday looking for evidence of pest.  I try to make sure the soil is wet enough or not too wet.  I'm constantly checking the blooms for fruit on all my vegetables and look at what I found in my cucumbers.  I put a plea out to my fellow gardeners on FaceBook and did some research on my own.  The conclusion is Assassin  Bug.  Yep, he found my cucumbers.  As a matter of fact, quite a few of them were enjoying themselves to my plants.   I immediately got on Amazon and order Diametrious Earth.

 I also had a birthday this month and much to my surprise I had a package waiting for me when I got home from work.  My youngest son is attending college in Maryland and sent me this Awsome 55+ sunscreen hat and some bamboo gardening gloves.  He is definitely the favorite this year!

 Other than the Assassin Bugs the garden is looking great.  I actually found a young lady bug, but unfortunately I haven't seen any since.  The beans are looking good and the cucumbers are hanging in there.  We're still waiting for the DE to arrive

The Day that the DE arrived we ended up have strong winds out of the south/southwest.

The weather forecast kept promising rain, but that really didn't happen.  I had to water the garden any way.  This was mainly a wind event. Unfortunately this weather system did bring major tornado's to North Texas and 4 people ( as of now) have lost their lives.

This is taken right at a curve in the road as you can see the water is just starting to come across the road.  I moved in after Hurricane Ike , so far this is the highest I've seen it, but we haven't had any strong tropical storms and definately, no significant hurricanes.

 I thought I would see how high the water was on the canal. Not too bad, we're not in any danger of flooding.

 Of course, as many storms do, the next day brought gorgeous weather.  Winds had died down, the humidity dropped and so had the temperatures.

Now with the beautiful weather and calm winds I'm ready to treat the garden for pests. However, before I did I took a good look at the garden and noticed my green bean stalks were being eaten.  Unfortunately, I could get a picture of the pest, but I did decide it was a Mexican Beetle.   The DE should take care of him and his friends with no problem.

 I'm not sure if you can see my first Early Girl, but there she is!







My Grape Tomato's are looking pretty good so far as well!  I have quite a few blooms on them and have some high hopes!




The cucumbers have done very well, in spite of the winds and pests.







Before using the DE I did YouTube some video's to make sure I had some sort of idea of what I was doing.    I also learned that not only is DE harmful to the bad bugs in your garden, but it can also be harmful to bees.  I had a clean color applicator bottle that I cut the tip off to make it wider.  I filled it with DE, waited til late evening (when bees are less active), and then dusted the garden with it.  I tried really hard to stay away from the blooms as not to kill any bees that might be trying to pollinate.  I also went around the raised bed hoping that would help as well.

The weather forecast is predicting rain this next week, possibly heavy.  We'll see if it happens.  I'll have the grand kids next weekend.  It will be the first time they've seen this garden.  I expect we'll be doing some bug hunting!

How does your garden grow

     My garden as been doing nicely since treating for pest and planting Marigolds.  My Cucumbers are in bloom and growing like crazy, We need to get the trellis up soon.







     The Green Beans are looking good and blooming nicely.  This is my first experience with both the cucumbers and green beans, so I'm excited to see that they are being successful.  I'm not sure about the green beans and a trellis.  I'm thinking I need to probably stake them.

  Feel free to leave me suggestions in the comments!

   The cucumbers are growing like crazy, so we finally found time to get the trellis up.

   We used a 1x2x8 which we cut in half and attached 4" square trellis netting. The vines attached to it with no problem. They seem to be very strong, but I'm interested to see how much support the cucumbers will need once they begin to fill in.


     My herbs are doing very well,  I'm able to gently harvest the basil and parsley.  I did not harvest the cilantro this week, but next week I should find some Tex-Mex Recipes to make. I should get at least one meal.  One of my favorite cilantro additions is to add it to H E B's Charro Beans. The fresh cilantro really adds a freshness to the canned beans.

     I do have a small problem with one side of the parsley leaves turning yellow.  I suspect it may be too much watering.  We did have some rain earlier in the week. I'll be keeping a close eye on it.

      As the week progressed, I noticed that something was chomping on my orange bell pepper leaves.  I've spent most of the weekend research the problem.

    The only beer I had was Shock Top, so that's what we went with.  After two nights of hunting, we came up dry.  Either I don't have slugs or snails, or the don't care for that brand.
   I've search high and low for caterpillars on every plant in the garden and so far I haven't found any.  I haven't noticed in snails or slugs either, but I thought I would set a beer trap anyway.
   I've read that squirrels and rabbits might eat them, but I think they would have eaten more than a few bites of leaves and only one plant.     I really don't think it's pests.  I read an article about a type of bee that may be causing the problem. I"ll see if I can find the article to reference it.  However if anyone has any suggestions as to what is happening feel free to share.




   My Cucumbers love their new trellis and the green beans are growing.  I have lot of cucumber and green bean blossoms and as you can see they are producing quite nicely.  I'm looking forward to a great crop of each.


  My next blog will be about setting up our automatic drip system.  With our busy schedule that will be a must during the summer months.