A rainbow garden and bounty yet to come

This is Cyan’s rainbow garden.  We have purple cabbage, yellow onions, green, yellow, and purple beans, yellow, green, red, and orange bell peppers, and nasturtiums… all in this bed.  The center will be a fountain of orange flowers that will bring a pepper flavor to our salads later this summer.  She was pretty excited to plant it, but a few weeks after we transplanted everything it all started to turn yellow.  I figured that this bed has been the hardest working because of the Grains of the World experiment and so I added some organic garden fertilizer to the top inch of soil and watered it in well.  In the last three days everything has started to green up again.    I can’t wait to see the progress as everything gets healthier!

My strawberry beds are overflowing with promise of future berries.  Unfortunately, very few of these little berries have gotten to ripen all the way.  The boys have discovered them (even the baby) and so they get eaten before I even see that they are ripe.  They swear they are waiting, but I will sometimes find one that is still half white with a big bite out of it.  I am guessing the baby doesn’t know the rules. 

Our lettuce bed has been producing for weeks now.  I get a HUGE salad every single day and if I wait more than a couple days I end up giving greens to neighbors. 

Added to our salads every night are some of our eatable flowers!  In this batch we have rose petals, pea flowers, and violas. 

You can eat calendula, borage, and lilies as well, and a few others that have not flowered yet, like nasturtiums. 

Just look at this beautiful green tomato! 

A few things haven’t quite gotten started, but one thing I have tons of is herbs!  This time of year is the PERFECT time to harvest green herbs such as oregano and sage.  Just before they flower is best because all their energy has been focused on producing their flavorful and pungent leaves!   Just drop a couple washed handfuls in your dehydrator and wait until they are crisp but not brittle.  Let them cool and they should break in your fingers if dry all the way.  Bottle air tight (or freeze in an airtight bag) and save for those months in the winter!