First Squash Harvest & Herb Garden

0-1squashI harvested my first green egg squash. It grew at sonic speed after the storm we had the night before. 0-2squashThe rule at our home is the first squash of the season should be fried, but since a few years ago we avoid greasy foods, so our first squash are stir fried instead of deep fried.0-3squashI picked some chard, green onions, onion chives, garlic chives, sweet basil and rosemary to add to the stir-fry along with orange peppers that I froze last gardening season. The stir fry was delicious.0-4squashWe grew everything in this stir fry, except for the olive oil that we used to stir fry the veggies. I think that’s awesome!chef

 Now for the reveal from the teaser in my ‘Friday in Green‘ post.

herbgardenWe got carried away with buying herbs and had no choice but to make an herb garden.
My husband picked out the cute birdbath for the center of the herb garden. We think Mickey and Minnie Mouse are so adorable. My husband planted some celosia flowers to add color to the herb garden.
I figure by fall, if the weather acts right, the herb garden should be quite productive.
I figure most of the herbs won’t survive a winter, but we’ll wait and see.

You may have noticed that I have 3 rosemary plants; the one in the pot that I’ve been posting about for awhile and 2 plants in the herb garden.
My brother sent me a ‘Rosemary Madeline’ plant for my herb garden. It’s supposed to be hardy in our growing zone. I hope it survives the winter and grows well.
My husband also bought a rosemary to grow in the herb garb garden. I don’t know what it is other than rosemary. Like the rosemary that I bought, in the produce department, it didn’t have any other name or variety info on it’s plant stake. I’ve checked several garden centers around here and they all grow/sell rosemary but none label what specific variety it is.P1000599aI originally planted peppermint and chocolate mint in the herb garden, but after reading up on the mints and how invasive a plant they can be, I transplanted them into pots and keep them on my porch. By-the-way, the chocolate mint smells like a andes mint or a york peppermint patty. I haven’t tasted it yet though. P1000500aYou can tell from the photo that my sweet basil and cinnamon basil are growing well. My lemon basil is the pot on the far right, it isn’t growing as fast. I’ve replanted the lemon basil seeds at least 5 times and only a few plants have come up. I believe there is something wrong with the seeds like they’re old or something. However, if the plants I have growing now survive they’ll be just fine for being greenery on my back-porch and maybe for flavoring a food from time-to-time.

Except for the herbs in our stir-fry, I haven’t used most of the other varieties. However, I’m planning to look up some recipes to try them out. I hope I can stick to my plan and maybe I’ll discover some tasty recipes.

Wishing you all a happy weekend!
smileflower

Lavender herb or flower

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My lavender is blooming. I bought it last year thinking I was going to give using lavender herb a try.

I read a recipe of lavender infused tea. Oh it sounded so lovely and pleasant like it would be refreshing on a hot Summer day.
I was talking to my BFF about the lavender tea. I pondered aloud “I wonder what lavender tastes like.”
My BFF laughed and said, “It probably tastes like purple.” lol

It was a bit late in the season for me to a start seeds, so I decided to buy an already growing plant. I found one at a local plant/fruit stand. It was a lovely little thing. On the way home I imagined myself, lounging on our back porch with an icey glass of lavender infused tea.

After I got the plant home, I looked it up on the internet and discovered there’s different varieties of lavender. The plant stake that came with mine was plastic with a picture of a grown plant and said ‘lavender’, but didn’t say what variety. So, I decided not to try it, since I couldn’t be sure if it was safe to eat or not.

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I gave up on making any lavender recipes. Sadly, I took the little plant and planted it in one of my flower beds. It grew quite a bit over the summer. I figured it would die during the winter, but this Spring it was a nice surprise to see that it survived.

I don’t know if it’s edible, but I plan on letting it grow and survive for as long as it can. I think it gives a bit of character to my flower bed.

I know the photos of this lavender aren’t top quality. But for some reason my camera has struggles trying to focus on it.

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Do you think this variety is edible?

Wishing you all a relaxing weekend.cloudhugspgrnbgln