Strawberries and Scapes

It's strawberry season! We've been picking a small bowl every other day for the past two weeks or so.

Saturday's Harvest

Unfortunately there are some critters in our garden that also enjoy the berries.

Critter-chomped Strawberry

I think it's probably mostly birds - but sometimes we find a berry that was dragged to another part of the garden - maybe by chipmunks? We have a lot of robins and blackbirds (not sure if they're *actually* blackbirds or just black birds. I need to consult my birdwatching friend Amy. Either way I get the Beatles song stuck in my head every time I see them in the back yard).  I haven't put up netting because they leave a lot for us, and part of me likes the fact that I'm helping feed the local wildlife. The boys also have fun chucking the bitten berries into the bushes.

My other big garden excitement this past week was discovering scapes on my garlic. This is my first year growing garlic, and until about last year at this time I'd never heard of scapes.

From about.com: Garlic scapes are the "flower stalks" of hardneck garlic plants, although they do not produce flowers. These stalks start to appear a month or so after the first leaves. They are usually cut off of the plant, since leaving them on only diverts the plants strength away from forming a plump bulb. If left on, they eventually form small bulbils that can be planted to grow more garlic, but it takes 2–3 years for them to form large bulbs. Many gardeners simply toss their scapes in the compost, but garlic scapes are both edible and delicious, as are the bulbils.

The curly thing in the middle is a scape.

Scapey goodness

I chopped off some of my scapes on Thursday and made a pesto like sauce that I slathered on salmon before baking it. Woo! Those scapes pack a definite punch! There are still some ready to be harvested so I need to search for some good scape recipes.

In other news, my snow peas are flowering like crazy. The below pic was taken last Wednesday. I just went out and found that there are now lots of little peas. I may have my first harvest by the end of the week!

Yay! Peas!

And here's an overview of my tomato, pepper, tomatillo, ground cherry area. I also just planted bush green beans (Tenderette) in the right third. This was also taken last week. I was out there today and the tomato plants look a little bigger already, and the beans are starting to poke up. Need to get some cages out there for the tomatoes!

I'll leave you with a close up shot of the ground cherry plant that's still in my house because I didn't have room for it in the garden. Lots of little lanterns all over that sucker. I plucked off all the flowers on the plants that went into the garden because they say that helps the plants develop bigger root systems and get larger, but I left them on the plant I didn't have room for in my beds. Now I'm kind of regretting pinching off those flowers in the garden. Those plants are just starting to get flowers again. This one on my windowsill has lots of fruit!

Ground cherries galore!

I planted that guy from seed, and he's all grown up now. I feel like a proud parent.