Pansies, peanuts, pears and pots. Oh and eggs!

 I love this time of year when I no longer have to depend on store bought flowers. Making little bouquets from the garden to scatter about around the house brings me joy.

I will now always grow kohlrabi in my planters each spring. I love it's beautiful, purple ribbed, upright leaf amongst pansies and trailing vines. And what a fun surprise to look down to find it's hidden, bright purple bulb.

I have always wanted to grow peanuts and am trying them this year in a container. They prefer a light well drained soil so I thought they may do well in a pot. These guys won't be ready until September. 

I have been unhappy with my window box plantings over the last few years. I have tried many different varieties of plants (many of which prefer sun) with disappointing results. This year I decided to keep it simple and plant a few tried and true shade lovers, begonias, licorice vine and Tradescantia.  Everything seems very happy in it's shady spot.

 Our dwarf Bartlet pear tree is one happy camper this year. Last season it did not produce a single fruit. This year there are over 50 pears!

 

I like to incorporate at least one perennial into each of my pots. Since they come back every year, it saves a bit of money on annuals and if they outgrow the pot into the garden they go!  This pot got a purple leaf Heuchera (Coral Bells). I love how it looks paired with the licorice vine, purple sweet potato vine, begonia and pansies. It gives a little height to the arrangement.

After a very long winter of no eggs our girls are laying daily. Since I eat an omelette almost every morning and my sage is in full bloom,  I can't wait to try Annabelle's recipe.

Transitioning from spring to summer, and a kohlrabi stir fry recipe

Most weekends in May have been spent working hard in the garden. The growing season is early this year, so it's a challenge to keep up! Yet we're making good progress on the water garden (yay!) and moved a giant pile of rocks that was next to it. Now that area is much more beautiful with small native plants we planted. I'm so excited about this new spot in our garden! I hope to follow up with a post on it next month.

This month we enjoyed lots of sugar snaps, which are now gone, but with okra seeds planted in their place. For lunches and dinners we have been eating many salads with arugula, buttercrunch, endive, and purple lettuces. As the temperatures rise, those salad days are also coming to a close. The young tomato plants that we started from seed are now in the ground, with pesto and thai basil plants nearby.  Green been plants are growing, the grapevines are heavy with tiny green grapes, and a row of carrots are waiting to be dug up. Bouquets have been full with daisies and bachelor buttons. This week the first echinacea and African daisies opened and so begins the transition from spring to summer. I eagerly await the first zinnias!

 

This month we picked a lot of kohlrabi, which grow great around here. In a previous post I mentioned one of the ways we like to fix kohlrabi is in a stir fry.  Last night I made a stir fry with garlic, shiitakes, kohlrabi, and bok choy, and the last of the sugar snaps, all from our garden. It was delicious! There was also onion from the store as ours aren't ready yet.  If you need a (sort of) recipe for this, here's how I made it.

1. Melt about a tablespoon of butter in a wok or pan on medium heat and add chopped shiitake mushrooms. Sprinkle with a little sea salt. The mushrooms soak up the butter fast, but continue to cook them for a few minutes until they shrink a bit and release some liquid.

2. Add sliced onion and cook for a few minutes. At this point the pan was a little dry so I add a small drizzle of wok oil, flavored with thai basil and lemongrass.

3. Add chopped garlic and the chopped kohlrabi. Stir and add a swirl of soy sauce. Cook the kohlrabi a few minutes until they begin to get just tender.

4. Add the chopped bok choy, stir, and put the lid on.

5. Add the sugar snaps and a cup of hot miso broth. Simmer just until the bok choy and sugar snaps are tender.

6. Add soy sauce and sriracha sauce to taste. Serve over rice or noodles if you like. Enjoy!

oh boy, kohlrabi

This week I got a roll of film developed and a few shots are from late winter/very early spring, such as the one of the seed starts above. And I thought gosh, that seems so long ago. Everything was still brown outside then! Plus those kohlrabi and broccoli starts have grown so much since then, and that was encouraging, to see how far they've come.

While they're not ready to harvest yet, there's a couple ways we really enjoyed preparing them last year, raw and cooked. They're a good snack cut into matchsticks and dipped in a little dressing. Several times I also made a kohlrabi and beet salad. We also like to stir fry chopped kohlrabi with onion, garlic, and bok choy and serve it over rice. Spring is yummy.