My First Dish From My Vegtable Container Garden

Here it is my first dish. Fried Eggplant

I wanted to do Baba Ghanoush which is an middle eastern dish. Kind of an eggplant dip. I've been having a little problem finding a recipe. You see there are two kinds of eggplants. Now I'm assuming the recipes are calling for the regular type of eggplant that looks like this:

I have Japanese Eggplant growing which looks like this.

You might notice that it is much thinner they the other eggplant. So that leaves me with the question how many of them should I use to equal one of the fatter eggplants. I'm thinking two which means I'll have to wait because only one of them was ready to be picked.

Anyway the Fried Eggplant was delicious. Here is what I did.

Take Eggplant and slice it into no more then 1/2 inch thick slices. Dip in egg and dredge through flour mixed with a little salt pepper and garlic powder. Fry in hot oil until tender.

I have to thank Shawie from A Grateful Heart for the idea. I hadn't considered frying it, but she mentioned it in her comment to me and it sounded tasty.

Broccoli

I had to do some research on broccoli. My plants started sprouting flowers before I could pick them. They were still pretty small so I thought I had more time until harvesting them.

I thought since it had flowered I wasn't going to get any edible broccoli from it. But I am happy to announce that after hitting the library I learned that once I cut off the central bunch more will grow. This will give me plenty of tasty broccoli. I just have to watch out and harvest them before they bloom.

I also learned that I probably have them planted a little too close. I have four plants in my container and the books I looked at said they should be about 18 inches apart. But other then a little insect activity they all appear to be healthy plants. Now I just have to see about keeping the bugs away.

Eggplant

Check out this beauty.
We went away for a couple days and when we got back my eggplant had really grown.
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Little problems

Hi all Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. My Hubby is going for his Masters Degree and has the computer most of the time.

My tomato plants in my hanging experiment is getting yellow leave and no longer is nice and bushy. I think its from all the rain we've been getting.

I think I'm going to have to do some more research on growing tomatoes in a hanging basket. The top is cherry tomatoes and when every I see pictures of them growing in a hanging basket they are always bushy looking and hanging over the edge in a nice neat way. Mine have grown out and hang down looking kind of like they want to break off. I'm going to take some pantyhose and tie the to the Shepard's hook to help keep them from breaking.

The larger tomato plants I have growing out the bottom aside from having some yellow leaves, seem to have stopped growing in size and are getting some tomatoes.

The tomato plant I have growing next to the fence looks much better I have been threading the plant through the fence instead of staking it for support. It has several tomatoes growning on it.

I apparently have some bug issues as my lettuce and broccoli leaves have been getting some holes.

And look at my tiny eggplant just starting to grow. The flowers on the eggplant are very cute. The next time I see one I'll have to get a picture for you.

My First Award for my Vegetable Container Garden Blog

Thank you My Bargain Mom for giving me this award. You have a great site to get tips on
how to shop smart, and the best use of coupons to save money With advice to help live frugally.





Here are the RULES of this Award:
(1) Thank the person who nominated you for this award.
(2) Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
(3) Link to the person who nominated you for this award.
(4) Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
(5) Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.
(6) Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
(7) Leave a comment on each of the blogs, letting them know they have been nominated.



To follow the rules of this award, I am choosing the following blogs to receive this award...

1. The Art and Science of Parenting

2. My Kids Are My World

3. My Crazy Life With A Toddler

4. Gohn Crazy

5. Comedy Plus

6. Jinxy Knows Best

7. Boogers, Screams, Headaches, Dreams



Seven Facts about Me...

1. I'm Married with 2 wonderful children.

2. There are more pets then people in my home.

3. I'm One of the original Video Gamers. Pong to Pac Man I've played them all.

4. My Favorite Authors are Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child When they write together. Something always seems missing when they write seperately.

5. I hate housework and it probably shows a little too much.

6. Some day I hope to own a small house on a large piece of property In the Mountains. I would rather have more room outside then inside.

7. Right now I'm Very Addicted to CafeMom's Latte Land. Cafe mom is a web site for moms to get together on and Latte Land is their new game where you run your own coffee stand :D

Container Garden.... What I've got so far

As promised (yes I know I was suppose to post these a couple days ago, sorry I got distracted) Here are the photos of my container garden.

The Broccoli is doing well.

This is a salad mix I saw on sale when I was out. I though I would give it a try.

I'm not really sure what they all are so it should be interesting.

On the right is a tomato plant and on the left is a jalapeno plant. I'm going to try making my own salsa this year.

This is an Eggplant on the left and my pepper plant that I started indoors over the winter on the right. It's still growning kind of slow.

As you can see I still haven't dug up the flower bed the landlord said I could mess with.

The sun only seems to come out when I'm working when I'm off it's raining.

I may have to just go out in the rain and do it.

Update on my Tomato Planter Experiment

Well I've got my tomatoes planted in my Experimental planter. As you can see the Cherry Tomatoes on top are growing like crazy. I've snipped the top shoot to try and keep the plant more compact. There are a few flower buds so it shouldn't be long before I see some tomatoes. The tomato plant on the bottom is growing more slowly.

Something I didn't think about but found quite interesting is the upside down plant is trying to grow up. This makes sense of course since that is what plants do. But for some reason I just didn't think that it would do that. Of course once it starts getting tomatoes it will grow down. The weight of the tomatoes will make it which is of course the idea so we don't have to stake it in place.

Tomorrow I'll post some pictures of my container garden. I've gotten 4 of them planted and growing well. I've put them next to our fence so that I can use it to secure any plants that need support as they grow.