Thursday, April 21, 2011

invitations, tomatoes, and how do you prepare fava beans?


This blog post has been a few weeks coming. I've been taking lots and lots of pictures of the general goings on around here, but you know.

Ok. First I was really busy putting these in the mail. (Thank you to all who helped! It was really a group effort!)


Then I got sick with a cold that had me sneezing for 4 days straight. It left me with the I-just-blew-my-nose-for-four-days-straight-mustache look. Cute.

And between the grand mailing-of-the-invitations and the catching a cold, I've been working a lot (at my job and in the garden) and taking lots of pictures.

A couple of posts ago I alluded to a newspaper pot tutorial that I was going to put up here. Well, someday I'll get around to telling you all about how to make newspaper pots. But even if my tutorial never makes it up onto the internet, no one will ever go for want of knowing how to make a pot out of newspaper because there are a zillion other people who have put up tutorials on their blogs showing how it's done. So for now just google it.

In the meantime, I'll show you some photos of the tomato plants that have grown up out of our newspaper pots. I'm very pleased. They're almost the same size now as the starter tomatoes you can buy at the store. 

Cherry Tomato, mid-March. Just potted it.

Three Brandywine Tomatoes, mid-March. Note: They are in newspaper pots (circa January) in a box of homemade compost that my dad brought down for me as my compost pile is not yet...well...composted. 



Cherry Tomato. The last photo made me think he wasn't going to make it. This looks more promising. mid-April.

Brandywine has taken off!

Brandywines mid-April
Cherry Tomato today. No longer being supported by the toothpick!

Brandywine today. They've grown a lot in the past couple of weeks!


These photos are especially for you, Dad. I hope you're reading! And I hope your tomatoes are growing!


So that's been fun, watching the tomato plants grow. Hopefully we get some delish fruit off of them. Homegrown tomatoes are the best.

I didn't bring my camera with me, but the bean plants at the community garden plot got tomato cages placed around them, too. Wait you didn't know about the bean plants?? Oh right, I haven't told you yet. I planted a zilllion beans at the minifarm. In counting the ones that have sprouted, I think the tally is 16 black eyed pea plants, (hope we like black eyed peas...), something around 8 green bean plants, 2 "royalty purple pod beans" (sounds exotic) and 1 golden wax bean. The directions for the beans said to place structures for them to climb around on before planting them, but I was eager to get my seeds in the ground. Now that they've sprouted, I'm short on time (and creative energy) and thus chose the easiest bean jungle gym I could imagine constructing - tomato cages. Hopefully beans like tomato cages and my experiment doesn't turn into a disaster ha.

And while we're on the subject of beans, the fava beans are coming into their glory and I picked a gorgeous harvest today.

Maybe someday I'll post a tutorial on how I made this little veggie bag. Suffice it to say it was easy. 

There are some peas in the mix as well. This is by far the biggest harvest I've had of homegrown goodies.

By the way, growing my own vegetables is getting to be addicting.

Now...does anyone have any good fava bean recipes?

2 comments:

cerissanne said...

You are so inspirational with all your little garden adventures. I wish I was like you! Is that a little stamp on your invitations? So cute! What an exciting time!

Meg said...

Thanks, Cerissa! Yep, it's a stamp I had custom made from a seller on etsy.com. I just love etsy!