☼ Grow your own damn Food! ☼

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These weekly posts are to share the progress of our garden; sharing photos and our gardening experiments and will hopefully inspire you to grow your own garden too! :) 

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Sooooo, it's been a reaaaaally long time since I updated the garden posts, huh? Wellll, let's just say that our garden has been thriving like crazy! 

Our tomato plants are taller than I am. And the tomato plants that we thought were done definitely came back to life! We also took one of the branches from one tomato plant and planted it in the same bed--because we heard you could do this. At first they looked dead but they, too, came back to life and are now also thriving. 

Our zucchini plants are producing so much that we can't keep up! We've been sharing and freezing and getting creative. ;) 

The broccoli is now huuuuge. I need to take more photos I think. This is the first year we've actually had broccoli that worked! The plant is much bigger than I was expecting it to become, while the broccoli itself hasn't been all that big. The sprouting broccoli didn't last too long but was good. 

Our peas were fantastic. They are all done now, have been for a while. So we planted some different spinach (the name escapes me, I'll ask the hubby later) and it's tolerant to heat so it's been awesome having it! 

The beans have been great. :)

I think the saddest moment was pulling up the lettuce that had bolted. I miss salad. We planted new lettuce but it's been slow starting and we sillily added compost into the soil so now we have all these squash and other wonders popping up from the seeds of compost. Oops! 

Well, the rest I'll just share some photos that I've already taken and I'll do another round this week with more photos next week. ;)

Hope your gardens are thriving and abundant! ^_^

[Humming Bird!]

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Ⓥ Vegan Kitchen: (Raw) Zucchini Cashew Alfredo Pasta Ⓥ

As I mentioned last week: sooooo many zucchinis (from our garden)!!! One of my favourite things to do with fresh zucchini is to keep it raw and make pasta! Super delicious and because you keep the zucchini raw you're also keeping all of it's amazing nutrients--plus nothing tastes better than zucchinis right from your own garden (or if you don't have a garden, shoot for local as it will too be amazing ;)).

Okay, so here is a super simple, easy, and divine raw dish to keep your summer sizzling and your tummy happy! 

(Raw) Zucchini Cashew Alfredo Pasta

Pasta:

1 large, or a few small Zucchinis, spiralled into long thin "pasta" shapes.*

Sauce:

1 cup Cashews (soaked for 10 minutes or longer)

1 cup Water

1 Tbsp Lemon Juice

1 Garlic Clove

1 Heaped Tbsp Nutritional Yeast

1 tsp Salt

dash of Black Pepper

pinch of oregano (optional)

*Zucchini Pasta Preparation: 

Maybe you are fortunate enough to have an awesome spiralizer, but if you don't (and you don't want to fork up $40 or so for one) then there is a small investment alternative: a Julienne peeler! Ours cost us $12 and it works like a charm. It may take a little more time than a speedy machine, but I like the preparation process anyways, and it really doesn't take very long at all to use one of these amazing peelers. Oh, plus you get awesome thin beautiful "pasta" zucchini! ^_^ 

Sauce:

Place ingredients in a blendtex, vitamix, or even a food processor and blend until smooth. Takes approx. 5 minutes in a food processor. If you own a blendtec or vitamix then you can warm it up slightly too (and it only takes about a minute! Did I mention I love my blentec??! ;)) 

Add a little more water if necessary, or to get your desired consistency. Taste test if needed. 

Serve over your zucchini pasta, top with chopped avocado and you have a delicious heavenly meal that's super good for you!  

Makes approx. 2-4 servings.

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☼ Grow your own damn Food! ☼

. . . . . . . . . .

These weekly posts are to share the progress of our garden; sharing photos and our gardening experiments and will hopefully inspire you to grow your own garden too! :) 

. . . . . . . . . .

 [happy kale!]

Alright! Missed last week *gasp*

[happy orach spinach]

So, we planted our beans finally. :) They are in triangles around the two bamboo trellis we built (which we moved to the third bed in the back). 

We also planted a row of bolt-resistant lettuce (which I don't remember the name of, I'll dig it up soon!). And we mulched the bed with grass clippings. Everything in this bed is doing nicely. 

[happy swiss chard and pok choi / broccoli] 

[happy lettuce]

Though most of our spinach went to seed. 

Our mustard greens went to seed as well. Our kale is enormous and happy though and we've been able to harvest every single day for smoothies and salads. 

We pulled up the mustard greens, except for a few plants that hadn't gone to seed and some that had so that we can save the seeds later. In place, we planted a cantaloupe and honeydew melon starts that Cory picked up yesterday in town. 

There are two tomato starts we have inside that are doing super well so we are probably going to plant those soon since the starts my sister gave us sadly don't look like they're going to make it. I think the soil is just too dry in the back of that bed so we'll plant these elsewhere. We also have some mountain spinach starts that love the sun so those were planted in the pea bed. So far they look very happy. 

[bolted spinach in the pea bed / new mountain spinach]

Our strawberries are starting to flower so hopefully not too long before we are eating fresh strawberries. 

We also discovered a strawberry plant at the side of our back steps so we should be getting a few strawberries from there as well. 

In the back bed… we staked the tomatoes with bamboo poles. 

The zucchini plants are so happy and getting so big!! We are super excited as we've never been able to grow zucchinis and these are so super happy! Our peppers and tomatoes still look happy as well. :) 

If you found this article to be helpful, please consider a small donation or visit the shop. Thank you for your love and support.