Ripe Bittermelon Fruit

February 18, 2008 | Filed Under garden | Leave a Comment

The orange fruit in the middle is a mis-shaped bittermelon that has gotten too ripe. Bittermelon fruit should be eaten when they are green and at their most bitter. When they start yellowing and eventually turn to orange like this one, that means they have ripen and only good for the seeds at this point. Save the seeds for next year.Visit our kitchen for bittermelon recipes.

Wordless Wednesday: Our Winter Backyard

February 13, 2008 | Filed Under Wordless Wednesday, garden | 10 Comments

Posted for Wordless Wednesday.

Polk Salad Plant

February 11, 2008 | Filed Under garden | Leave a Comment

My husband calls this polk salad and it’s edible. It is actually a very good green vegetable, but it is supposedly toxic and has to be prepared a certain way to draw the toxins out before they can be eaten. So when these start coming in, we gather up the tender leaves and give them to our next door neighbor, Miss Mary, who then prepares it and cooks it. At the end, she give us a bowl full, our share of the polk salad. They are actually delicious, like a cross between spinach and collard greens.

They say that it is best to eat the greens in the spring. By the fall, when they’ve flowered and have berries, they say not to cook them then as the toxins are more concentrated.

The Lost Papaya

February 9, 2008 | Filed Under garden | 3 Comments

My husband composts all our kitchen scraps in the garden so it’s no wonder that we get some unrecognizable growths in our garden sometimes. We thought these were okra plants. We waited all summer for okra, and none came. Not even a bloom. But then towards the end, we noticed these little buds… it finally dawned on me, maybe it’s not okra. I think it’s papaya! See the little fruit bud starting to come on? Of course, soon after I took these photos the temperature started to plunge and these papayas shriveled up in no time.