it has been a wonderful eve of the 4th of July! at least in the way of harvests.

i have been wanting to harvest the garlic for the last 2 weeks now, but since i just planted them 2 months ago, i thought they would need more time. i also read that just before being ready to harvest, garlic plants grow scapes (flowering stems), but mine never did - i think its because i just planted them in april (they normally go in the ground the previous fall) and it has already gotten very hot. considering that they were only in the ground for 2 month, the size of two of them are rather good - both around 2 inches in diameter. the other one was about 1 1/4 inches. i am trying to cure them in our garage (which we use for storage). but we may just eat it before that happens. (we only HAVE three...plus, we are garlic lovers).

i have no idea about the species of garlic this is...it is just one of those garlics that you buy from the grocery store. we let our garlic lie around for too long and three started growing, so i planted them. (this year, i ordered garlic cloves of different species to be planted later in the year...that should be interesting!)


this is the second part of the harvest...4 japanese cucumbers and 2 light green zucchini. the larger zucchini went completely unnoticed until now (that zucchini jungle is HUGE, what can i say) which explains the size (i would have otherwise picked it at the size of the smaller one). after scrubbing off the spines on the cucumbers i went to eat dinner. i then found out that we will be meeting some people tomorrow who showed interest in some zucchini and cucumber, so i went out to look more closely at my plants for a second time...


(oh, this is the "group photo" of the first harvest i made today)


after going through all the harvestable plants with a keen eye, i found these - 1/2 a handful of sugar snap peas, 2 more zucchini and 3 more japanese cucumbers. those cucumber plants are amazing. i still see a bunch more getting bigger.


i also harvested half of our remaining yellow and red onions. the yellow onions are somewhat small, but the red one is our largest so far. not bad, huh? again, these are plants that we bought at a plant nursery as seedlings. i will keep them outside to dry and i might take a couple to my aunt's house tomorrow.