Garden Update 2

This past month, we started harvesting some yummy produce from our garden. It felt like our plants really flourished from the major amounts of rain and days of intense sunshine.
Unfortunately, we had some terrible encounters with the deer this past month. They came and chomped off the budding baby lemons. But, the lemon tree has started producing new flowers so I've got my fingers crossed that we'll see at least one full-grown lemon this year.
Our wildflower bed is sprouting more heartily but I think we didn't seed it quite enough. Next year we'll be more aggressive. The bokchoy was out of control so I chopped 80% of it off and then we enjoyed it in bibimbap.
We had lots of jalapenos to pick and eat. They were perfectly spicy; they had enough heat to impact the meal but not so much to make eating uncomfortable.
We also had a nice cucumber harvest. We haven't bought cucumbers from the market in a while and it's one of those items that we buy weekly.

The edamame plant actually died (maybe because the bee balm plant and cucumber plant got so big they started stealing sunshine) but before it went off, we picked off the pods and enjoyed them immensely. I simply boiled them for a few seconds and then finished them off with a little himalayan pink salt.
Even though the bee balm might've been responsible for the death of the edamame plant, I love that it's flowering. And maybe it's psychosomatic but I really do think I've been seeing more bees in the garden lately.
We've also had a poppy or two bloom. They don't last long and they seem to have really weak stems, but they're gorgeous nonetheless.
The watermelon vine is out of control and making loads of flowers. I'm kind of doubtful that we'll be able to eat any melons (I'm being a pessimist) but maybe we'll see a baby melon of two get started.
Our Korean long hot pepper plant is making loads of peppers too. I can't wait to enjoy these with some ssam.
Our lemon plant made so many buds and we even saw the start of a few baby lemons but then some predator came and chomped them all off! I was so sad but then, the lemon started producing more buds. What a resilient cutie.
The geranium has made loads of flowers and I love the punch of color we've had all season.
This little citronella plant has been so great at warding off mosquitoes. Unfortunately, over the weekend when it was storming badly it fell over and the pot shattered. We just transplanted parts of it to the wildflower bed and the main root to a new pot but I'm sad because I loved carrying it over to the garden when I was watering it and it was tall enough to guard the entire length of my legs. It really worked at keeping the mosquitoes at bay.
We've had lots and lots of perilla leaves growing all over the place. I made pickled baby perilla except some of the leaves were not really babies.
I love how amazing the lavender smells and the pretty buds.
And the carrots are doing really well.
But maybe not quite good enough to be picked yet.
A video posted by Michelle Kim (@micheemichh) on

xoxo.

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