Our Garden

We have a garden! Well, technically, Mike's parents have a garden and I just harvest from it and sometimes choose which herbs and vegetables to plant.  Here's a tour of our mini garden. 

Shiso Plant. I am not sure what we will be doing with these leaves yet.  I read an article that you can chop it up and eat it with natto.

Hawaiian Chili Pepper Plant-Still no flowers or peppers.  I'm hoping that I will see a few flowers in the next couple of month.

My mint plant.  Mike says that I chose to grow a weed plant.  It sprawls and grows on its own.

Cilantro!

My basil plant!  I started pruning it after it started growing vertically and did not seem to branch out.  Now look at this beautiful bush.  It's even bigger now!

Rosemary

Papaya Tree 1

Papaya Tree 2

Chives. 

Eggplant

Mike's mom's kale plants. We now have four plants. Freshly harvested kale is so much better than store-bought kale.  It seems to be much more tender. 

Mike's chayote squash vine.

Another view of Mike's chayote squash vine.

Green Onion

Chinese cabbage and bush beans

I don't think we will ever have enough to cook a complete meal just from our garden, but it sure is nice to go out to the yard to pick fresh herbs to use when cooking!

Chayote Squash

Do you know what this is? It's chayote squash! From my mom's garden! My mom only has one vine, yet the squash keeps growing and growing.  Mike decided that he wanted to grow his own squash and planted some seeds about one month ago.  He told his grandma that he was going to grow chayote squash and she started laughing and exclaimed, "That's what we used to feed to the pigs!" Mike is now growing pig food in the backyard.

I decided to research chayote squash online and I did not realize how healthy it is.  The fruit is low in Calories and high in folic acid, Vitamin C and potassium.  Apparently you can use the leaves for tea to help lower blood pressure

I placed a cell phone next to the squash so that you can see how big they are. 

Stay tuned, in the next couple of months we may have our own chayote squash from "Mike's Garden."  Also, that means that we will start posting different chayote squash recipes!