It's been a little while since our last vegetable garden progress report, but the broccoli and the gang wanted us to give you all a quick synopsis of their growing efforts. Though it's been hot and dry this summer, Wendy and I have been diligently watering the garden and herbs in an attempt to provide a bounty of fresh vegetable. The garden is not huge, so I'd venture to guess it is more of a 1/4 bounty, maybe 5/16ths if we're being generous, but it's been good none the less.

Some of our less fortunate plants died rather quickly after planting. Though it started strong, the spinach just got too hot and shriveled away. We'll try them again later this fall or next spring. The peas also did not fare well, and left so quickly we hardly even had a chance to know them. I guess that's just the way of the garden sometimes, especially when you are just trying things out to see what works.

Even though we had a few quick deaths, we've had moderate to good success with several of the others. Though very hot for the lettuce at this point in the year, it did yield enough to make a few small salads and some burger garnish prior to the 4th of July weekend. Now it's just holding on and hoping for cooler and wetter weather. I don't think better weather is coming very soon, but we've not let on to the lettuce yet.

We have a little strawberry plant that is doing okay. But the a-hole squirrels keep eating the fruit. The photo below was taken mere hours before the little red and almost ripe berry was stolen from right under our noses. Lulu is not standing guard as I've asked her to do.

The other moderately successful candidate is our beets. Though puny to start, one of the plants has sort of taken off and is doing well now. It was a bit of a surprise, but a good one at that. We're hopeful for the eventual outcome of these particular veggies.

Our broccoli, while not yet yielding any broccoli quite yet, are getting quite large. A couple of the plants have a large hard ball in the middle that I assume will eventually be our broccoli. I've had to monitor these very closely for cabbage worms and have picked a few of these little jerks off. Grrrr.

The lavender and chives continue to do very well, and we use them often for various garnish in several dishes.

We're most excited about the eggplant, which really took off in the last two weeks. We have two large and several smaller ones showing their stuff. Can't wait for these to to ripen up.

The basil, mint, parsley, rosemary, sage, and other herbs are doing absolutely great and we love to use them whenever possible. This is especially true for the basil. It seems every other dish Wendy whips up is using some of our basil, from salads and appetizers to our main dish. I just haven't seen them use in dessert Iron Chef style, though it wouldn't surprise me one bit.

And finally, the Kale ended up doing flourishing after I rescued them from the grips of the cabbage worm onslaught. Since those early tenuous days the kale has taken off with small and large leaves. We even had enough to make a good vegan Asian pasta dish for dinner two nights ago.

We started cooking a lot from the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook last year and have a couple of our favorites. A few nights ago I made the Lime Peanut Noodles with Seitan, Kale, and Carrots dish. It's a really great recipe with tons of flavor and allowed us to use our kale. 

We didn't have a ton of kale in our garden, so we pretty much used 80% of it, but at least it was for a good dinner. It's a bit hot out to get a huge bunch of kale or a quick regrow, but we expect to get a lot more come fall. Until then, we can just appreciate that we had enough for our dish.

The whole dish only took about 30-40 minutes to make and made four servings. I can definitely recommend it if you have some kale that is itching to be used. Sadly, we had no seitan (and can't figure out where to get it) so I'll just have to imagine what it would have tasted like with that mystery ingredient.

Hopefully our next update will be filled with tales of eggplant parmesan or some other delectable eggplant inspired dish. Until then, we'll be fighting off the cabbage worms and tending to our crops in hopes of a full late summer and fall harvest. 

At any rate, we've come a long way in just a few months.

If you have a garden, how is it doing this summer? Too hot? Too wet? Infested with cabbage worms or stink bugs? Do tell.