spring harvests

The sugar snap peas are starting to bloom – I didn’t realize how pretty they would be.  This is quickly becoming one of my favorite things in the garden :).

I’m so interested to see how this pepper plant progresses.  It’s kind of a ‘cheater’ plant – it’s a purple bell pepper grafted onto ‘supernatural’ root stock, which gives it the vigor of the rootstock with the flavor and quality of the scion (the upper plant).  It has tons of flowers, and a few peppers starting already, which are so dark purple they almost look black.

A worm’s-eye view of the Jaune Flammé tomato.  

 More tomato flowers and possibly the tiniest tomato I’ve ever caught on camera. 

I don’t often see the chives from this angle…guess I really should do something about those blooms!

Ditto for the broccoli – blooms are no good!  This being my first time growing broccoli, I’ve only recently learned that the part of the broccoli plant that we eat is actually the flower.  (This gives a whole new meaning to ‘cauliflower’.)  Each little green thingee is a bud, that turns into a yellow flower if you wait too long to harvest your broccoli.  So I harvested this one today, and will have to eat the rest very soon, though they are not as close to flowering.  I steamed the broccoli and some of the leaves, but left the rest of the plant which should grow additional side shoots and make me some more broccolis!

 

And for dessert, a harvest of strawberries so sweet it makes my mouth water just to remember them, and a bit of mint for tea.

If you keep my secret, this strawberry is yours.
~Tsugumi Ohba, Death Note Box Set