Garden Harvest & Update July 23

The garden is starting to pick up lately. My wood mulch in the paths has severely limited the need to weed, which I totally love! Here's what I harvested this week:

Picked a nicely blanched head of cauliflower & 2 Anaheim peppers:

I have tried two types of blanching, one using rubber bands to bind the leaves together and the other using a stick to poke through the leaves to bind them together. My first 2 heads were rubber banded, and they did not blanch well, due in part to the fact that the rubber bands disintegrated in the heat. This head (above photo) was done with a stick, which I was able to poke and repoke through the leaves as the head grew. I'll stick with sticks from now on.  "stick with sticks"! ha ha ha

Friday, July 20:

Three heads of cauliflower (again, the stick blanching method worked best), 2 cherry tomatoes and--our FIRST cantaloupe!!!! Brett is my cantaloupe fiend and he couldn't WAIT to eat this one. I love how home grown (and local farmer's market grown) cantaloupe have sweet, juicy flesh all the way to the rind. And, the rind is nice and soft and honestly, just cuts like buttah. 

I spent most of the weekend with my bestie M, shopping at IKEA (twice in 24 hours, but who's counting) and then helping her decorate/clean for a party. Soo, last night I did a quick perusal of the garden and came out with a little treat for me:

A lovely handful of tart cherry tomatoes, a few green beans, 3 little side shoots of broccoli , more banana peppers &  Anaheim peppers! yay! 

Anaheim peppers mean PEPPER JELLY!!!

The broccoli & green beans are a particular victory as they were mowed down by a woodchuck about 2 weeks ago. I harvested quite a bit of parsley, rosemary and dill for rosemary chicken and parsley/dill pototaes (yum!)

My garden is really starting to produce--soon I'll be up to my elbows in produce!

Linked to Daphne's Dandelions  and An Oregon Cottage.