#i got beans greens potatoes tomatoes🍅

[bleach-your-panties]

Yuhhhh, finished my soc work, now I just have to take my midterm tomorrow and I'm free!!!

[queer-crip-grows]

Today’s little garden harvest! This is probably the last of the peas 🫛 and they’re mostly going into envelopes for replanting next spring. Small but tasty onions that survived the slug onslaught. The first ripe tomatoes, which Cynthia and I shared, and blueberries and gooseberries with a few of the very first raspberries 🍅🫐

Turns out Cynth absolutely adores the tomatoes🍅 , which is lovely as we are likely to have a bit of a glut if all the green ones ripen okay! We have a mix of vine and bush tomatoes; bush has been much more productive so far, but admittedly the poor leggy vine was rescued from a garden centre where it had got snapped in half so it has had a lot of regrowing to do!

We haven’t had to buy peas since June, which has been pretty awesome. Sadly the beans just utterly failed due to the slug plague; even the flowers got eaten down to the stalks, poor things. Next year I’m growing them right off the ground in hanging baskets and trellises because they just don’t survive even in big pots.

The onions aren’t big, but they are tasty; not bad given how bad the slug onslaught was.

I am very chuffed with the soft fruit. I mean to move the blueberries, redcurrants and gooseberries to a different bed once the raspberries have died back because they are getting utterly crowded out by the raspberries, which are now well over six feet tall and bowed down with ripening fruit. It’s been no aching with pollinators too - not just bees, but wasps and butterflies too! 🐝 🦋

Hoping to get winter turnips and more potatoes in for over the winter along with some tasty winter greens, though I’m not sure if we would do better growing those as microgreens indoors.

The lentils are hanging on too and I’m very interested to see how they do.

The sunflowers are finally blossoming 🌻 so we should get some good seeds from them if we are lucky, and the nasturtiums have been bumper as usual - we may have had the slug onslaught but we did avoid the caterpillar 🐛 plague I’ve been hearing about from folks down south in England, so swings and roundabouts I guess!

I’m very pleased with the decision to let a lot of the weeds grow outside the raised beds and pots this year. I made it because there were so many butterfly eggs on them and they have really come through - the garden has been absolutely full of butterflies this year, including some species I wasn’t familiar with before I looked them up. The water dish with the big rock has been very effective too even in the worst heat - all the herbs and flowers have been hoaching with pollinators throughout the year.

[sincerelyciarra]

A Brief Vegetable Ranking

by someone who doesn’t really like vegetables, and especially not raw ones (the wet kronch is Bad)

🥦🍅🍆🥬🥒🥕🌽🥔🧅🥦🍅🍆🥬🥒🥕🌽🥔

Artichoke: Not really sure what these taste like. Not a fan of spinach and artichoke dip because I can’t get past the idea that something Suspicious is going on in there. I know people eat artichoke hearts but, ngl, seems like a lot of work with little reward. 3/10

Asparagus: Far too expensive for such a little dude. Looks and tastes the most like what I imagine the first branch off a young, spring sapling tastes like. Smells like you did something wrong when you cooked it, even if you did not. If I ever had to make a Scarecrow-Medusa, this is what I would make her hair out of. 2/10

Broccoli: Roasted broccoli is fucking delicious, and I’ll hear nothing to the contrary. Also very good in soup! 10/10

Carrots: Not my favorite. Fine in small amounts, but too much becomes Too Much a lot quicker than you’d expect. Good in curry. Not as good for your eyes or as popular with rabbits as Looney Tunes would have you believe. 5/10

Cauliflower: (Please see, Broccoli.) Bonus points for also coming in purple. 11/10

Celery: Looks and tastes like the color green, but in the worst possible way. When you learned about chlorophyll in the fifth grade, this is the smell you imagined. Gets points back for being delicious in chicken soup, but ultimately not worth the pain of having to dodge around it while you’re eating because. Ew. 3/10

Corn: An objectively superior vegetable in almost all ways. Would eat in every form except as cornbread. 15/10

Cucumbers: Whoever started the idea that adding slices of cucumber to water would make it Crisp and Refreshing is Wrong and A Liar™ and Should Be Punished For Their Crimes. Water is already on thin ice, taste wise, and the addition of cucumber ruins the experience entirely. However, you can place the slices over your eyelids for a little at-home spa day like Ashley Tisdale in HSM 2. 1/10

Eggplant: Full points for inspiring the word Aubergine, which rolls off the tongue in such a delightfully pretentious way. Also, eggplant parmesan is good, maybe? (hearsay, unsourced.) 10/10

Green Beans: A favorite, but only when they come from a can, otherwise they’re too crunchy. (Fresh green beans are acceptable roasted.) 9/10

Lettuce: BIG HATE. All of the bad qualities of celery with none of the good. An evil leaf that sits limply on top of your food, dripping its horrible juices all over everything. My personal hell-food. Irredeemable. Abhorrent. -10,000/10

Onions: I don’t personally fuck with onions, but only a fool would deny how much onions have done for us as a society. Truly the backbone of modern cuisine. Just wish they didn’t look and feel Like That when cooked. 20/10

Peas: Do people still eat peas? Who decided that peas were going to be the Frozen Vegetable Staple™ for multiple generations of americans?? I’m pretty sure I’ve only had peas in chicken pot pie and so-so vegetable soup, and they’re nothing to write home about. Genuinely would not know how to cook them if asked. Points for always being tucked in the back of your freezer for when you need something to ice your knee. 2/10

Potatoes: GOD TIER. Fantastic in all forms. Also, to those of you saying that potatoes don’t count as a vegetable because they’re mostly starch: learn from NASA’s mistakes and stop trying to pluto my boy off the food pyramid. Respect your elders. 100/10.

Spinach: It’s fine I guess?? Feel like it could be doing more for itself. 5/10

Tomatoes: Do Not understand the appeal. Uncomfortably wet and full of seeds. The thought of biting into a cherry tomato and having it squish in my mouth fills me with dread. Delicious in soup (sometimes) but I could and would live without it. 4/10

Zucchini: Someone brought in a loaf of zucchini bread to an elementary school pot luck and I never got over the betrayal. 0/10