Are there any backyard veggie gardeners here?

[K Atie]

Go to  few more seedlings, coloured silver beet and beetroot , will nurture these as quite cold mornings now .

[achookwoman]

KAtie, my gardening neighbour said it is now too cold to plant seeds.  Seedlings ok.
It is lovely in the garden these cool days.  I am still picking Zuchinnis.  The cherry tomatoes have ripened indoors.
Yesterday I picked the whole plant of sprouting broccoli .  I chopped up the leaves and cooked them in a hot pan with mushrooms.  No water.  It will make a good pizza topping for vegetarian GD. The leaves were a bit spicy , like water cress.

[cookie1]

DH stole a bean from our Chinese neighbours (they are lovely) and decided to grow these. I don’t like them as a bean. Does anyone know what they are please and different ways we could eat them. They are frolific.

[achookwoman]

Cookie, I think they are Snake beans.  In  Chinese cooking they are often cut into small pieces about the size of a pea.
GD is coming again today to help in the garden. 

[cookie1]

Thanks Chookie. We also grow green snake beans which I enjoy.

[Cuilidh]

I would say they are snake beans as well, Cookie.  Do they change colour when you cook them?  I quite like them on the odd occasion when I buy them

[cookie1]

No, they stay purple. They have a very different taste to our green snake beans. DH really enjoys them and makes himself a salad from them.

[cookie1]

I love growing indoor sweet potatoes from a bit that is cut off the potato. Every time I do DH steals it and plants it in the garden. It has become a bit of a joke between us,. We have plants everywhere. Yesterday I decided to dig part of one plant up. We now have sweet potatoes everywhere, We still have lots of area to dig up.

[judydawn]

Great crop cookie.

[Cuilidh]

Yum, Cookie, they look great.

[K Atie]

Cookie Do you grow sweet potato like a carrot top inside ?

[cookie1]

Yes. Cut a pice off the bottom of the sweet potato and put it on top of a small jar or vase using toothpicks to stop it sinking in. It will shoot and then you break the shoots off and pop them in water as though they are flowers. They will grow roots over the next couple of weeks and you can plant them.
Next time you want to grow them just take bits from the plant and root them.
Sweet potatoes will only grow from a rooted cutting.

[achookwoman]

Great harvest Cookie.

[K Atie]

Thank you Cookie that’s something new that I should have known .

[achookwoman]

Made sweet potato crisps yesterday.
Planting climbing bean seeds today .
Been harvesting Snow peas.