Garden Update

Dave & I both grew up with parent's who garden and we must've inherited their green thumbs because we've had our own little garden of some sort in every home we've owned together. This is our biggest so far because we've lived here the longest. It started as one bed then every couple months it seemed he was eager to add on another. It is a joint effort but he keeps up with a lot of it when he's home and is always asking me how the garden is when he's away. Thankfully, he reminds me to water it too!

After running around all day yesterday and a serious thunderstorm last night I hadn't checked on the garden in at least two days so I was pretty surprised how huge the squash and tomato plants looked all of a sudden.

Then, after I noticed one of the potato plants was dead I looked down and saw potatoes lying right there near the top of the soil! These plants all came from one icky potato that was sprouting roots in my pantry. I figured I'd just cut it up, throw it in the soil and see what would happen. I had no idea if potatoes grew well in TX or not. Turns out they do and here is our whole bumper crop... we ate them for dinner sliced thin and sauteed in Meyer Lemon Infused Oil.


This last picture is of the first garden bed he built for us here. Its kind of the rogue garden, full of herbs I planted 3 years ago, Moonflower vines & Morning Glories that come back from seed, and my experiments like the above-mentioned potatoes and a few thriving tomato plants that came from a handful of moldy grocery-store cherry tomatoes I buried out there rather than throw in the trash. You can often find Cali in one corner of this garden munching on chives.

For more info on growing new plants from kitchen scraps (like my icky potato or moldy tomatoes) check out the book Don't Throw It, Grow It! You'll never look at your produce bin the same way again. Just to clarify, I don't own this book but I did glance through it at the store and it had tons of cool (although sometimes complicated & time-consuming) ideas.