Sunday, July 17, 2016

June/July Garden Updates

We started planting our garden in April and after 2 months of hard work, we were excited to harvest our first crops in June! It's been 1.5 months since our first harvest and to be honest, the excitement has died down and we've been overwhelmed with all the work to pick, clean, and store all these veggies! Planting was just the easy part, harvesting is where the 'real' work starts. We both have to admit that we are a lil' overambitious this year planting so much. Plus, we both have full-time jobs and I've lost count of how many evenings and late nights we spent pickling/spiralizing/canning to preserve all these veggies. I started bringing some veggies to work for the clients and now I'm known as the 'farmer'...lol!!

June 17 (Fri): As you can see, everything we planted grew well and this was how our garden looked when we still had energy to clean out the weeds (it looks like a jungle now...haha!). Can't remember if I mentioned before but we used google sheet to keep a count of all our plants and crops. And this is what I meant by overambitious:
50 broccoli plants
44 tomato plants
15 zucchinis mounds
9 watermelon mounds
8 cucumber mounds
100+ corns

June 17: Came back from our vacation to these...*faint*

Had to discard some of our tomatoes due to blossom-end rot but we managed to add calcium and revived the rest. And that's our giant zucchini. :P

June 26 (Tues): First batch of pickling. Can't remember how many more batches we did subsequently but we probably have enough dill pickles to last us for 2 years. =.=

I was very hardworking in arranging everything nicely for photos previously but I can't afford to be OCD anymore coz it takes time and I've still got preservation work to do after this...so tired. P.S. Our freezer is completely full with zucchini noodles.

July 8 (Fri): This was how we spent our Friday evenings...first batch of tomatoes canning and more cucumbers pickling. I've done 4 more batches of tomatoes subsequent to this and there's still more to do... =.=

July 27 (Wed): After-work work...canninig more tomatoes!!


July 29 (Fri): These pretty much summarizes our 2016 summer. 57 quarts of tomatoes and about 50 jars (various size) of dill pickles and bread & butter pickles!! 2 whole months of hard work storing and canning all our harvests. Will probably take a break from gardening next year...lol!!

Tried making pickled green chilies (jalapeno), the ones we eat with Char Hor Fun and Char Bee Hoon. Turned out pretty good!

On top of a full time job as an auditor, part-time job as gardener/pickler/canner/spiralizer, I'm also a chef. I like exploring random recipes so don't judge my food...haha!


Food prep for the week. P.S I'm a good wife...lol!!

Taco spice chicken, stir-fry broccoli (from the garden), new recipe...zucchini Frittata, and Tom Yum tomato soup!

June 27 (Mon): Traveled down to Birmingham for team meeting and breakout game. P.S. My partner took that photo of me while I was super focused trying to solve the last code...haha!

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