May Garden Pasta for One

I’ve got an extra day off today so I decided to make something new from the garden and decided on pasta.  This time I used pea leaves and tendrils, radish greens, japanese mustard greens, viola petals, Spanish mint, hyssop, and marjoram from the garden, added olive oil, a splash of malt vinegar (only because I don’t have any lemons on hand) garlic, salt and pepper and let it sit while I boiled the noodles.  This takes exactly as long as it takes you to cook the noodles so if you’re in a hurry or don’t feel like cooking this is perfect.  You can make the dressing a few hours beforehand too, the longer it sits the better it will taste!  I also added a bit of parmesan cheese.   And again, this will work with any greens and herbs in your garden, I can absolutely recommend this combination though, the mint is really great in it.

 

about this much is a good amount for one person (about 3 centimeters high I guess)

so good.

The great thing about growing vegetables like peas, mustard and radish is that all parts of the plant are edible so you can use them in a ton of different ways.  Also, all three of them grow quickly and early, so you can get some fresh greens earlier on in the year!

And I do promise to do some more vintage sewing posts soon!  First rainy day I promise.  Enjoy the fine weather 🙂

Flowers and Markets

The spring garden market is finally open!  I’ve been buying things bit by bit all week, and after a particularly crap morning chez doctor I decided to get the last few things taken care of 🙂  I planted a ton of seeds but I wanted to try some new varieties and waiting for seeds to germinate really stresses me out 🙂  The balcony is still a bit messy but you can at least see how everything is coming together.  Tomorrow I’ll clean everything up, buy the last bag of earth and set up the umbrella.

Here are some shots of Neumarkt and the flower market on Saturday and my balcony so far (click on the tabs for the gallery view!):

Because nothing happens in Germany without beer and bratwurst

the herbs are getting bigger!

peppermint, spanish mint, pear tree, wild rose

purple tiger stripe eggplant. I haven’t grown eggplant before so let’s see how it goes 🙂

white peach tomato

black zebra tomato. I’ll be honest, I just bought this because of the name 🙂

pinnochio peppers and lemon thyme

japanese mustard, rosemary and what will hopefully be green sausage tomato and suyo long cucumbers

japanese black truffle tomato

violets, more mustard, and what will hopefully be huckleberry

my watermelon radishes are getting there

peas on the left, the box on the right will hopefully be may queen lettuce. I’ve not had any luck growing lettuces in the past so I hope this works!

lots of strawberries, a pot that will hopefully hold snapdragons soon, on the lower right is Fushimi peppers, the upper right is raspberry, and I totally forgot what I planted in the pot to the left. I like to have a few mystery plants anyhow 🙂

sorrel. I’ve never grown this before (or eaten, now that I think about it) but it looks pretty and I’ve heard it’s great in soups and salads.

I’m going to have a ton of strawberries this year!

long shot 1. you can see I still need to clean up a bit before the balcony garden is totally “done”

my rose bush is budding!

long shot 2. Sorry about the bags everywhere.

I love poppies. If I had a house I would cover my entire yard with them.

I fell in love with these dahlias at the market. The other ones had more red in them but I thought these would look better with the other colors. In German nemesia are called Elfenspiegel: Elf Mirrors, which is hands down the best name ever for a flower, next to snapdragon in English.

garden decorations 🙂

hopefully I’ll have a lot of blueberries this year too! I need to get a replacement for the one that didn’t make it, but hopefully my huckleberry will work out and I won’t need to.

And that’s that for now!  I think I pretty much have everything I’ll want this summer, although I might run back to the market for some Peruvian sage that smells delicious, and if my chocolate mint doesn’t get sprouting soon I’ll get another one of those too.  I can’t even say how happy I am that spring is here! Hiking and gardening are here finally!