Despite my best intentions at writing more consistently, nearly 3 months have passed since I’ve written any updates about my gardening endeavors.  Luckily, I’m diligent about taking photos of things to refer back to and recollect my thoughts.  If only I could get myself to be that diligent about the written word, eh?

Things were going really well with the garden.  By October, everything had been in the bed for about 2 months.  The arugula, Swiss chard, jicama, basil, jalapeno, and cherry tomato plants looked awesome!

The cherry tomato plants just kept getting taller and taller — hitting the roof and flowering like crazy.

And within a week or so of the flowers appearing, all four plants were full of green tomatoes.  Yay!!

At this point I was patting myself on the back because I actually g-r-e-w something — I really did it!  I thought this was all pretty exciting considering all of these grew from seeds I saved from table scraps.

They changed from green to RIPE quickly which is good because I was way too excited to taste them.  I loooove tomatoes!!

At the same time, the arugula and Swiss chard were really filling out.  I always buy arugula at the market and so I kept waiting for my leaves to grow as large as the store bought version.  But they’d get to a certain size and then wither within a week or so.  In a moment of sheer **ahem** brilliance, it occurred to me that perhaps the type of arugula I’m growing doesn’t grow as large as the type that I buy.  So I decided to harvest it as it was and see what happened.

YUM!

Apparently I was right.  They were not meant to be larger because after trimming all of the leaves off, they regrew.  Makes me wonder how many harvests I missed by waiting for them to get bigger.  Oh well, I’m learning.

I also trimmed up all the Swiss chard and to be honest, it tasted like earth.  I’m all for healthy greens, but they gotta taste good — and my Swiss chard did not.

Of course the next logical step was to combine the arugula and tomatoes (and lots of other yummy stuff) and make salad!  My favorite salad is a fine chopped mixture of arugula (check!), tomatoes (check!), raw broccoli, raw carrot, bell pepper, fresh made garbanzo and white beans, avocado, Swiss chard (that doesn’t taste like dirt!), shredded red/green cabbage, and hemp seeds tossed with my homemade balsamic vinegar pear dressing.  Oh and I’m really treating myself right, it even has some goat’s milk feta cheese from Rancho Avellanas.  DELISH!!

Oh. My. Gosh.  People, seriously, I cannot tell you how tasty these tomatoes were!  Sometimes cherry tomatoes can be on the sweet side, which is not my favorite, but these were just the right mix of sweet and tangy (more on the tangy side).  And the arugula (mouth is watering!) was so crisp, nutty and with just the right amount of that peppery taste.  The end result was definitely super encouraging!  Putting lots of love and energy into something and then having it give back to you in such a tasty way!

At the same time, the rest of the garden was definitely on it’s way to producing other goodies for us to eat.  The jicama leaves were creeping up the trellis reassuring me that somewhere deep below the soil a yummy, crispy root was forming.  The basil was getting larger and taller and was so fragrant you could smell it from outside the gated garden area.  The peppers were producing more leaves and tiny flowers.  I was feeling pretty optimistic about the whole garden thing and looking forward to planting my next batch of seeds.

But that’s whole other post which I p-r-o-m-i-s-e to write in the next few days.  Promise.

On August 24, I finally got around to transplanting arugula, Swiss chard, jicama, basil, jalapeno, 4 cherry tomato plants, as well as ayote into the raised bed.

The arugula and Swiss chard are looking really good.  I took a few little snippets of the arugula to test the flavor because I read that if you are growing in a hot climate, and you allow the leaves to get too large, they can become hot or bitter.  So far my arugula is just simply yummy and I’m having to practice self control to not cut it all too soon and eat it.  Patience Tricia, patience.  Arugula is one of my favorite salad greens — I think I could live on arugula salad.

vegetable I know all the magic is happening out of sight.  Mmmmmm, I can’t wait to have chilled, chopped jicama with lemon and chili powder.

I’m not sure how the ayote is coming along, it seemed to be growing really quickly but has now come to a halt — other than blooming these beautiful big yellow flowers that stick around for a few days.  I’m just kinda’ waiting to see what happens on these.  I assume that blooming means something good.  They seem happy, nothings dying and for that I give myself a huge A++ 😉

Sprouted seeds from chili rocotto, aji and Panamanian.   I make a mean salsa and can’t wait to use these!!

It’s been a lot of fun to see how these things grow.  Every morning Manchita and I go outside and inspect all the plants to make sure there’s no creatures devouring my veggies before I do, however, other than one worm, I have not found any pests at all.  I’m not sure if I’ve just been really lucky (fingers crossed) or if it could also be that I’ve planted lots of marigold all over the veggie bed and along the shelving after reading that it is a great all pest combatter.  Maybe it’s working, maybe it’s luck.  Whatever it is, I’m really happy about it.

I purchased some more seeds for three different types of tomatoes, some purple carrots, broccoli and green beans that I may not get around to planting until after the rain.  Additionally, I purchased a medicinal herb kit consisting of 25 different herbal plants which I’m very anxious to plant and learn more about.

I’ve always been intrigued by people that grow their own veggies and herbs.  A green thumb seems like such a great talent to have.  I love plants, but through trial and error I arrived at the conclusion that cactus seems to be what I’m good at growing.  They don’t depend on me much and so our relationships have always been pretty satisfactory.

Earlier this year someone forwarded me an article regarding The Monsanto Protection Act.  I’d heard little bits and pieces about GMO vs. non-GMO, organic vs. non-organic, etc., but had no idea what the commotion was all about.  After a little research I was stunned.  (Talk about living in a bubble!)  It just seemed so illogical what’s happening with the food system when there is such an obvious problem.  And these toxins aren’t only in the food we eat, they’re in products we expose ourselves to every day by using toiletries and cleaning products loaded with poisonous ingredients.  What the….??

I’ve always considered myself a healthy person.  I’m athletic, I eat mostly a vegetarian diet and feel that I live a generally health conscience life.  But after learning about what’s really in all that we consume, it became clear that unless a person makes some conscientious decisions about what they eat and the products they use, they are slowly poisoning themselves.  I wanted to eliminate these things where I was able to.  So, I slowly refilled my medicine cabinet with organic or homemade toiletries and started paying more attention to the labels on products, the food I was buying and questioning where it came from. While for the most part the agriculture industry here in Costa Rica is not saturated by GMO crops, many of the food that is available at the supermarket are products manufactured using altered crops.

The hubby and I decided that we would start a veggie garden.  We have tons of space and the climate and soil here are ideal for growing.  However, since I’ve never grown anything successfully, I wasn’t really sure how to begin.  I starting collecting ideas and learned that it was possible to sprout seeds from kitchen scraps, which I found amazing.  I can start a tomato plant from the seeds that are left on my cutting board?  Really?  I can have ayote (Costa Rican version of butternut squash) by sprouting the seeds inside rather than throwing them away?  Yes.

I started viewing just about everything as potential food to grow.  Curious, I attempted to sprout the seeds from the kitchen scraps of several types of chilies (Jalepeno, Aji, Rocoto, Panamanian), cherry tomatoes, ayote and even lemons.

I was so excited when after few days, there were roots growing out of the seeds.  Neat-o!!

Around that time, my beautiful friend Miranda started sharing photos with me of her amazing garden.  She has a raised bed and grows pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, strawberries, honeydew, watermelon, bell peppers, and purple peppers, not to mention some unbelievable dahlias!  She really inspired me out of the curiosity stage of gardening into the “let’s do this” stage.  Her stuff was beautiful!!

One day we went to get some soil and as we started, a tractor came by and offered a helping hand.  What luck!!

It’s warm all year long here, but the rainy season is definitely WET.  As of a month ago, we were dragging all the plants out into the sun every morning and then heading home when it was going to rain to put them all back under the patio.  What a pain!!  So we decided to build a covered gazebo garden area with a clear roof so the plants could get light all day long, but still have protection from the rain (more of which is coming!).   It is SO nice to be married to someone that knows how to build things!

I love this new addition to my daily routine.  Every day I wake up, rub the sleepies out of my eyes and go out to check on my lil’ garden.  It’s so much fun to see each of the plants growing and changing.  Sometimes things shoot up overnight!