My Garden Summer 2021

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This Week in My Garden

Okra

Took my usual morning stroll in the garden.

I’m struck anew how much nature can provide if we are willing to do some of the work.

In the garden this year, I present to you the beautiful vegetables, we’ve grown.

We have a couple of varieties of okra we always grow, but I saw the red ones on Etsy and I just had to get some.

This is the first time for the red okra, they taste just like the green ones of course, but they add such color to the garden.

I love to look at the many variations.

Okra is a favorite of mine. Some people cannot appreciate its mucous content, but there are several ways to substantially reduce it if you cannot tolerate it.

I wrote a previous article about the health benefits of okra. You can check it out here if you like.

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How beautiful is that, such vibrant color.

All organic, well we purchase the soil from Lowes.

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The long okra with the pale green color is one my mom brought back from South America. We grow this each year and it grows very long as you see in the picture.

It is nice and supple not fibrous at all.

I love okra and I enjoy every bit of it. We fry it, steam it, boil it, and when picked fresh from the garden, tastes especially good.

We also freeze enough of it to last until the next spring.

Eggplants

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Eggplants are another love of mine.

I find they like the cooler weather. They do their best work when they are provided with some shade.

Look at the below picture, they were almost twins, seeming to grow from the same flower maybe?

They seem to originate from the same point and are approximately the same size.

Very interesting.

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Squash

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When I was a girl, I did not appreciate the texture of the squash. But with age and wisdom, this is another vegetable I enjoy.

An article I wrote about squash you can find here.

This year we have the smaller Asian variety and as in the picture above a long variety from South America.

This one in the picture above is just a few days old.

Bitter Melon

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These lovely yellow flowers are those of the bitter melon plant.

Also known as Carilla, I have an article about that somewhere as well.

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Sweet peppers

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This summer we did not see our usual return on this investment.

We generally reap much more, this year the harvest is a bit sparse, but we are still thankful.

These are a few of the vegetables we are growing in our backyard.

I enjoy the journey from seeds to the table.

Hope you enjoyed my backyard gardening tales.

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Thank you all for reading and for your support.

Pene Hodge is a mom, a nurse, a writer. She writes because she must. She loves people and is committed to sharing and gleaning knowledge for the betterment of all.

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Originally posted on https://justpene50.medium.com/membership