Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, How does Your Garden Grow?

"Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockleshells
And pretty maids all in a row."

- Mother Goose

My little brothers are ten and eleven years younger than me. I often served as a babysitter for them. One of their favorite pastimes was being read to. They absolutely loved nursery rhymes. We read from Richard Scarry and from The Real Mother Goose (pictured above).

Every single time I go out to my garden I remember those days spent reading to them. Especially the above nursery rhyme - for obvious reasons.

This year has been an incredibly, wonderfully wet year. Our garden is exploding. It looks like a jungle. I thought I'd share some photos and a few stories to go with them.

Before we get started, let me remind you of the beginnings of the gardening adventures. You can read about them here if you haven't already: https://read.cash/@JonicaBradley/propagation-not-propaganda-d96ce724

Now that you've had a chance to catch up let's get to the meat and vegetables of my gardening adventures.

Most years, we start our garden in April. Our climate is normally very dry and very windy. The gardening season starts later, here than in other places. We have harsh winters with snow and ice. This year we had the harshest of all winters.

If you've paid attention to world news, you'll know about the big Texas freeze in February. Many Texans lost electricity because the power grid was over-taxed by people trying to stay warm.

We had some more late freezes this year. We started our garden with pepper plants, but they froze. All the little seedlings wilted and turned black.

We bought more seedlings, and I also started a few seeds indoors.

The combination of rain and cloudy, misty days has caused all of the vegetables and herbs to explode.

The weeds, too. Several years ago my husband got a motorized tiller for his birthday. Last year he used it to till up the dirt around the plants. He thinks he tilled a bit too close to the roots of some of the plants, possibly damaging the roots while trying to till up the weeds.

This year he has created flood irrigation beds around the plants. This has the added benefit of preventing the tiller from damaging the roots by getting too close to the roots.

We still have to pull a lot of weeds by hand.

My husband has a lot of extra work due to the rains. He has to mow and weed whack every few days. The weeds will grow up along the electric fence, rendering it basically useless, unless he keeps them under control. We need the electric fence to keep predators out, and to keep the goats in. I don't think the sheep would wander too far. But there is a saying amongst goat raisers, "If water can get through, goats can get through."

The weeds and grass in the pasture are also growing out of control. Our animals can't keep up.

It is very soothing to sit and look at all the green, even though I'm allergic to everything as far as the eye can see.

I really love fresh tomatoes. I make everything from salads to sauces. I include tomatoes in my omelets and I often fry up the green tomatoes for a tart, crispy appetizer.

My favorite by far is fresh tomato soup and a garden pasta sauce I make with roasted squash and tomatoes. It's really delicious. I can eat just the sauce by the spoonful. It helps that I have fresh tarragon, oregano, sage, and basil to add to the sauce.

I know I'm an excellent cook and I would do very well even with vegetables bought at the grocery store, but something about growing my own food adds an extra spice to any dish I make.

My husband is a picky eater and prefers meat and potatoes. Having the vegetable garden really increases his vegetable intake. We aren't getting any younger, and we can no longer eat whatever we want without health consequences. Picking food from the garden and cooking it right then and there is better for our health. My husband is willing to eat more homegrown vegetables than he would eat from the store.

When we were traveling in South East Asia, we were amazed at the availability of the veggies. When our host family wanted to make Pho, they would prepare the meat and the noodles, then go around their home and pick leaves right off the trees. It was always delicious.

Having a vegetable garden reminds me of my travels.

I don't just cook things that are considered traditional veggies. I love making food from all over the world.

I make Mediterranean Dolmas and Armenian Sarma. Also called stuffed grapeleaves.

Like in Laos, I collect what I need from the living growing things around me. In this case from our grapevines.

There's nothing like fresh picked food.

I haven't been harvesting like I should and I'm being overrun by vegetables. It's a pretty good problem to have.

I hope my friends like swiss chard because I'm going to have to give a lot of it away.

I have a condition called Hashimoto's. This condition causes me to have very low levels of thyroid hormone.

This is pertinent to my gardening because of all the kale. I can eat as much of it as I want, but I can't eat it raw.

If you have low thyroid, please cook your kale! Boiling it for about 7 minutes should do the trick.

My squash plants are thriving as well. I can't wait to make some zucchini fritters. I also use zucchini in a wonderfully moist chocolate cake. Yes! Really! It's amazing.

I won't know what kind of squash I'll have until they get bigger. I started a lot of seeds. Only 2 made it to be transplanted. There were a couple of storms and hail broke the delicate stems of those seedlings.

Two squash plants will be more than enough for my family!

Harvesting leaves, squash, and tomatoes is a lot easier than harvesting cabbage.

There are a couple of ways to harvest a cabbage head. You can just pull the entire plant. You'll only get the one cabbage. Or, you can do what I do.

You have to cut the cabbage head out of the base of the plant.

When you cut the cabbage out, several new cabbage heads will grow from the cut out center. You'll have cabbage all season.

Sometimes there are seeds that get left behind or tossed to the side. That's what happened here.

My husband has extra watermelon seeds and he just threw them on the ground. The next year (this year) a watermelon plant started growing. It'll be great to have fresh sweet watermelon.

Plants aren't the only things I grow for harvest. I raise egg layers, too. I'm be able to harvest eggs from this group in a couple of months.

The pretty brown hen should start laying in just a few weeks.

When I get enough eggs, milk, and veggies, I look forward to making a delicious quiche.

If I could invite all of you over for brunch, I surely would. You might have to pull some weeds and wash some dishes, but I'd feed you well!

Until next time!

Lead image: Hollyhock flower on my front porch; photo by Jonica Bradley

Image 1. By Blanche Fisher Wright - Dover Publications, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6951833