TicTac

I have been learning a lot about zucchini this year. Everything from best ways to prune and tend to them to what else can be eaten! We have always enjoyed the flowers, but I learned this year that the leaves are edible (and quite tasty/healthy) too! Younger ones are preferred, no stalk, just leaves - a sautee with onions, garlic (I just did one with baby zucchini's, flowers and garlic scapes as well) finished off with some acid - really nice.

Reapplying another round of cure on the gravlax - tomorrow’s dinner!

Bay Leaf is a very easy plant to grow - quite hardy and happy to be taken inside during winter then thrown back out to Mother Nature as it warms up outside. I will take a shot at some point, but the new growth on my bay leaf (in its second year) is fantastic. I attribute it to the little tree rat who nibbled the ends off (and essentially topped the plant for me) and helped perpetuate the bloom. Like my grandfather always said, plants love to be chopped down - make's 'em good and strong!

The side stole the show last night...(as good as my pulled pork Hawaiian burgers were). bbq roasted whole potatoes cut into 1/8ths - but the sauce - oh the sauce! Pan sautéed garlic scapes pounded in the mortar and pestle with olive oil turned into a paste combined with a mixture of apple cider vinegar fresh mayo, chives basil and parsley. awesome combo.

@rotuts - A cutting will absolutely make your life (and your path to $$$ & stardom - as @weinoo eluded to) much easier and shorter. A guaranteed female from a known breeder will shave nearly a month off your process. Seeds are also fun, as you can hunt for various phenotype's within one particular strain. Now you are headed down a steep rabbit hole....so make sure your harness is on tight! Oh, and if you move to Canada, it is now part of your rights as a Canadian Citizen to grow up to 4 plants.

zucchini flowers stuffed with ricotta, sautéed Egyptian onions, prosciutto and parm. no toes were harmed in the making of this dish.

Nothing against the broiler! Certainly would make it easier - though now that I think of it, you most likely will get different end products as I would think the pan method will reduce the overall salsa further. A recent chili order brought a new treat to experiment with, Morita peppers. Really smokey with nice fruity flavors. Roasted and blended, they make a great salsa addition.

The most important part of tonight’s dinner....zucchini flowers! This rendition sautéed with scapes, baby purple onions and a bit of lemon at the end.

Rather than roasting the tomatillos under a broiler, might I suggest treating them similarly to the first post, where the raw ingredients are 'toasted' in a pan - in fact, I continue to cook my tomatillo salsa in the roasting pan and turn it into a sweet/spicy salsa (caramelized tomatillos get a nice sweetness to them). Basic ingredients which can easily be added onto: Tomatillos sliced in half Some type of onion Garlic 2+ types of chili Cilantro Very basic, but many routes can be taken from that starting point.

I've heard storing onions in sand in a cold space for long storage is the best. Great haul @Shelby! Today I pulled about a dozen large zucchini flowers which will be stuffed with a ricotta/ramp mix and pan fried. Also got the first hot (Aurora) pepper of the year. Such a fantastic little purple powerhouse!

This thread makes me happy. I can use that. Your gardens all look fantastic, I am certainly envious of some of the space you all have (shouldn't say that out loud as I am sure @KennethT will pipe in about space limitations! ) So perhaps this is because I started everything from seed this year, and while I have always cared for my plants, I seem to have quite the attachment this year! Over the past few days we have had some high winds, less than a week ago, a large gust came and one of my poor yellow zucchini babies split. Completely in half - down the stalk...unreal. So in my haze of a mini-freak out, I reached out to my uncle who is my gardening guru; he informed me that zucchini leaves are edible (who woulda thunk it with all those pokey spines!) - so off the leaves went from the half a plant, into the kitchen (they are delicious, btw); I took the mutant Frankenstein zucchini and began my surgery - cleaned all the leaves, and then prepared a new home of heavily soaked starting soil combined with some organic worm castings and planted the wound into the ground. Well; it's been 4 days now and both the amputee and amputated half are still alive and dare I say, sprouting new leaves! A have often split plants before to give to friends/family or plant elsewhere, but this gives a new meaning to the method! I need to adapt either the straw method or perhaps the newspaper/cardboard one next year - too much weeding!!!

Can you post a link to the recipe or a general guideline? Love pickley things!!!

Nice specimen! Though I am not sure one 'plucks' broccoli....perhaps slice, hack, chop, or snap; might be more suitable verbs

Haiga rice - sweet and sour eggplant; all sorts of stuff thrown in.

I enjoy the stuffed ricotta method (I will often add things like crispy pancetta to the ricotta) I also like to pan sear the flowers freshly washed on high heat with some garlic and onions, sometimes chili - de-glaze with white wine and butter at the end and serve on crusty bread.

@kayb - do you not eat your zucc flowers??

Scored more live soft shell garden salad w balsamic and evoo

No kidding eh....that hollowed out pineapple...come on now, show off! 😛

This is a patch of deer tongue and another patch with a couple other varieties (and some vagabond dill!). I have patches of lettuce all around the property ... easy to grow in between crops and plants and if you spread your seeding out you can get 2-3 crops a year

lol show me yours and I will show you mine! (btw - what are we showing each other!?) 😛

There are a few types of arugula you can grow. Annual and perennial varieties. I prefer the perennial due to the flavour profile but also the fact that they come back every year, but also they do not bolt nearly as quickly as the annual variety. Been having some fantastic salads from the garden over the last week (I grow 4 types of lettuce, my favourite being Deer's tongue), with at least a handful or two of arugula in each bowl!

Vietnamese food is one of my favourites. Bun Bo Hue...o my! Looking forward to seeing pics from your travels (of food, that is - everything else while enjoyable, takes second fiddle here!) 😉

I have used tomato seeds per my method above that have been stored for at least 4-5 years with success. 14' ceilings...nice, look forward to seeing the new digs. Living tropical plant wall...very cool. Sign me up for one.

Ken - should have kept some seeds! Anytime I have a tomato I really like I just toss a few of their seeds onto any piece of scrap paper, label it, and put it away - best storage method ever! I would try the milk I guess, but as Shelby said, dilute it a fair bit. I often will throw crushed egg shells on my roses and into the compost heap. Lastly, please - stay away from miracle grow, that shit is garbage and is pure chemical nonsense! Just get yourself some good compost or a bit of bone meal and mix that into your soil. You can also make a 'tea' which I did recently for various...planted items....did it a few times, once with leftovers from veg stock; the other time I went all out, filled a stocking with compost and organic worm castings, suspended it in a huge pale and chucked a aquarium pump into the bottom - along with some molasses - plants seemed to quite like the stinky concoction.

Thanks @rotuts No idea how you managed that. Certainly not feasible from my iphone! I used to be techy....then I had kids. lol. Garden doesn't look nearly as nice as kay or shelby's but I think I am late to the game (good old Canadian climate) but I will update with far nicer (and healthier) looking garden shots in the coming weeks.