The babe

I recently embarked on a journey of growth and development and along the way have also found enjoyment; I refer, of course, to the growth and development of my own home-grown vegetables. If you look at my post-feed regularly you'll have seen a post or two about it over the last couple of months showing the very first setup of my garden to the growth of the little plants I put in.

For the last few weeks I've been harvesting my crop as things come to maturity and so far I've taken green beans, broccolini, cucumbers, lettuce spinach, celery, carrots, red onions, various herbs and strawberries. These have found their way into various dishes I've made and have been super-tasty indeed. But there's more to come.

The babe

Because of limited space I've been careful to select varieties that won't grow so big. I wanted to plant out a good selection and looked for compact plants designed for small growing-spaces like balcony garden pots and the like; one of these is baby cauliflower.

Normally cauliflower grows quite large, the actual plant and the vegetable, and I just didn't have the room so I picked up these baby cauliflowers and they're really looking great. This little babe you see in the image is still developing but isn't too far away from being ready. I call it a babe because it's small, about the size of a decent sized apple, not big like the standard version - Sometimes good things come in small packages right? I have several of these coming up and they all look rather healthy indeed. So...I'm chalking the baby cauliflowers up as a big win!

I have Aztec tomatoes growing also and there's so many I've had to stake up the plants to take the weight. These are also a variety that won't grow too tall but they deliver a lot of tomatoes and there's more on the plants than I can count which is great! I'm sick of those store-bought ones that usually have no taste and am looking forward to tucking in to my own - I hope they're good or I'm going to be mighty disappointed.

I have eggplants (aubergine) growing also but they're nowhere near ready so I'll have to wait. I'm planning on grilling them on the BBQ after a nice hour-long bath in a marinade...They'll be served with burgers or some such BBQ-type food, steaks maybe. I'm looking forward to that! Of course, the accompanying salad will be made with my cucumbers, lettuce, baby spinach and tomatoes. It should be a decent meal don't you think?

I've been having a great time growing these vegetables and have learned so much during the process. This planting has been a bit of an experiment as far as what I've planted and I'll do things a little differently next time however I've had some great success and am really pleased how it's all worked out. I was a bit worried about the cauliflower at first as it was taking so long but judging by that babe above I worried for nothing it seems.