What have you done today in the Garden?

Cleared the wallflowers and finished tulips out of one of the borders and planted up with lilies, cosmos and tomorrow plant the Snapdragons in. The ground was so dry I had to water the soil so that i could dig a hole to put the potted lilies in.

 

I have done very little in the garden for the last three days due to sightseeing, weather, more sightseeing and probably some tummy bug that isolated me indoors for most of today. Hope to be back with a vengance.

 

Hope you get rid of that bug asap. Have you been eating hosta again?

 

@Sjoerd - my apologies - yes IQF is individually quick frozen. My background is a Social Worker that worked in alternate education classrooms with at risk youth. Part of that was operating a commercial kitchen to give the kids job and life skills. IQF is an old habit of saying freezing on trays and bagging. We tried to tap into local farms and gardens. It also refered to purchasing items such as chicken etc that was already frozen in idividual pieces.

 

@Melody Mc. your garden is looking great? That Tri Cot Buttercup looks interesting. I hope it has 50% more flavor too.

Today I planted my freebie cuttings, forsythias and rosemary. I hope to someday see my forsythia hedge bloom. Some had nice roots, some had none. Considering how little effort I put in, anything is a gift.


I planted containers with African and French marigolds, Cleome, Cosmos, and Thunbergera seeds, and pickle cucumbers. Also soaked some more morning glory seeds to plant. I'll plant the nasturtiums directly tomorrow.

The pepper bed is planted with banana peppers, cayenne, Thai, and early Jalapeños. I still have others to plant, mainly Serrano and one Tabasco pepper plant. The drip lines are installed. Tomorrow I'll finish installing the paper mulch.

That's enough for one day Still didn't get the sweetcorn planted LOL

 

Thanks Mel. I get it now.
You had meaningful work. It is good that there are folks that do that work. It is necessary, but very difficult. I can imagine that you have had lotsa “thank you’s”.

 

Good morning! 14°C, overcast, drizzle, and I'm cleaning the house before going to the dentist. I don't think I'll be able to do much gardening today so I'll test if some of the old seeds are viable.

Thanks. No, they grew so quickly we didn't have time to harvest shoots. We'll try and make dolmades out of some of the young leaves one of these days. I hope.

 

@Droopy hope that you feel better soon, try a bit of dry toast when you feel like eating.

 

Thanks for the tip, Logan! I went with dead cola and salty crisps yesterday, and I think I'm OK today. I have a very strong fear of dentists so I can't say if I'm nervous or still have tummy trouble.

 

Your welcome and I'm glad that you are ok today, yes dentists are scarry.

 

Funny you should say that, Droopske. Our hosta’s bolted like that as well. Literally one dat they were poking through the soil and two days later they were tall and leafy. We were sitting on that bench in front of the shed, and the Bride remarked on it.

Dolmades with hosta leaves. Hmmmm, now you are saying something. Hmmmm.
Let us know how it goes if you do make dolmades, woodja? Please, pretty please.

 

Droopy, I've only made dolmades with young grape leaves. I didn't know hosta leaves were edible. The things one learns here!
Do you put dill and rice in your dolmades? I use ground lamb, rice, and dill and make little packets with the grape leaves. A great appetizer or light lunch (if you don't eat too many dolmades!

 

( As Mel quickly finishes googling Dolmades........). These sound delicious! I also did not know that you could eat hosta leaves. Having never tasted or seen a grape leaf Droopy, may I ask do you think that a large swiss chard leaf or beet green leaf would be a possible alternative? Or would that be a completely different - potentially offensive substitiute - kind of flavour? I do make cabbage rolls but very different combination of spices and texture from what I saw in my quick excited google of dolmades.

 

I will, if we can get around to it before the leaves are too big and stringy. They taste more bitter when mature.

Grape leaves are in short supply where I live. We can get them dry, but it's not as nice as fresh ones. I was two years ago old when I read a piece about cooking with garden plants and realized that Hostas belong to the Asparagaceae family, right beside asparagus. So you see it's fairly new knowledge to me that hostas can be cooked just like them. Hosta tastes green and cabbagy, and you'll find plenty of recipes out there on the big web.

Now, this is slightly embarrassing: I don't cook much, so I had to ask my husband how he makes dolmades, or cabbage wraps, which are same-same only different. He uses ground meat, preferably lamb, but any ground meat will do, and just salt and pepper. He also likes to mix pine nuts in with the meat. Since he loves his meat he serves rice on the side. I usually put wild garlic on my rice. This passes as dinner in our household. We haven't had it for a long time so I couldn't remember how it was served. I usually eat whatever he cooks and compliment the chef while eating, you see.

 

They are! I eat too many of them when we're in Greece. I don't know if those leaves would do the trick. If you like cooking you could make a few trial samples and check what it's like. Then you make a thread about it in the cooking section of this forum so I can read myself hungry from your hard labor, lol. The good thing about dolmades, or cabbage rolls, or hosta rolls, is that you can probably put whatever you like best inside. Our Greek friend is a very good cook, and she taught my husband how to make it her way but he prefers to do it his way anyway, so there you go. I wasn't very helpful now, was I?