Wednesday, June 22, 2011

What does your garden grow?

I have missed Dad's huge gardens ever since we moved away from Ohio.  In all of our travels, I have made attempt after attempt to grow a few vegetables in whatever yard we have happened to have.  This year, I thought about putting out tomatoes again, but decided I have fed the birds enough of those over the years.  Being in Texas, I have discovered that jalapeno peppers are THE vegetable to grow.  And they produce beautifully!  So, during spring break, instead of putting flowers in the flower garden that surrounds the mailbox, I decided to put 4 cabbage plants, 2 jalapeno pepper plants, and a rosemary plant.  It is truly the only place in our yard that gets sunlight for the majority of the day.  
The cabbage plants grew quite large in no time at all, and the peppers were producing before the month was up.  Unfortunately, my cabbages ended up with caterpillars on them and I had to treat them with sevin dust.  It took care of the caterpillars within a day or two and the plants continued to grow.  Soon, I had perfectly round little cabbage heads in each one.  
I knew it was time to harvest, so I had two choices: 1) pull up the plant, cut out the head, and dispose of the plant; or 2) simply cut out the head and leave the plant to produce a new cabbage heads.  I opted for the second choice, reasoning I might as well get my money's worth.  As I cut away the heads, I notice new little heads beginning to grow.  Dad says the new ones won't be as large, but Ron and I don't eat that much anyway.  I know it seems silly to some of my friends that grow beautiful gardens in this horrid soil, but I am so proud of my little peppers & cabbages.  I just had to share some pictures.  
The flower bed after I cut the cabbage heads out.  I should have taken a before shot but, I don't think that quickly.

The inside of one of the plants.  You can just see the tiny new cabbage heads starting to form on the left of the core.

Three of the cabbages I harvested.  I gave the largest one to Leslie before I decided to take pictures for this post..  

1 comment:

Sarah Harward said...

Wow! Those are some pretty cabbages!! I have 6 tomatoe plants, two bell pepper plants (one red and one yellow) and 3 zucchini plants in my garden! I can't wait until it starts producing!!