Photo Friday: How's That Square Foot Garen for You? My Chocolate's in The Mail And So Are Some Seeds!

 First harvest: Spring 2011. . . counting the days down.

My heirloom tomato patch. Behind this are the roses that had a true hard cutting in March and are growing remarkably well after suffering the abuse they took. Mixed in between are cloves of garlic.

My square foot tomato patch, chives, more garlic and carrots. Everything was planted using square foot gardening guidelines, and companion planting techniques. I also used crop rotations to justify placing certain plants in certain areas based upon what I had planted in the spot last summer. Supposedly, this will confuse the "bad bugs" that will emerge looking for their buffet table and now find something intolerable in its place. Yeah, I'm still seeing bugs, but that is the beauty of organic planting.

My peas! Then, lettuces emerging, and behind the peas are cabbages and, yes, my first year for brussel sprouts. (Just because I grow them does not mean I will eat them.) In the front of the shot, lettuces coming up, sharing the square foot with leeks and scallions.

I love my sage. Love it. It is a no-fail, always beautiful abundance of purple flowers--bees love it. Next to this is a clump of lavendar (which comes back every year as well) and loves being next to Mr. Sage.

I was asked a few weeks ago whether or not I reviewed chocolate. Well, let's think about this? As my profile states, "I am a lover of all things chocolate"--first sentence--how could I say no? I've never officially endorsed or reviewed anything in my blog thus far. Sort of set my mind to not doing so as I have been asked by several other folks--both food companies and book publishers--to review, and have turned them down or ignored the request--because I can! Enter Intemperantia Chocolates (Latin for self-indulgence) and in response to my "yes" agreed to review their chocolate. Here is what arrived in the mail (and you can read on the card--imported, no less!) a package of their gourmet, Swiss vegan hot chocolate mix and vegan baking chocolate squares. Well, now they had my attention. I had not had a cup of hot cocoa since becoming vegan--it's difficult to go from the old Swiss Miss plus water easy pour and heat method to something more complicated--heating the soy milk, adding the cocoa, sugar and vanilla. And I am a skeptic. But I am happy to report that I completely enjoyed a wonderful, smooth, chocolatey delicious hot cup of vegan cocoa Tuesday morning (in lieu of my usual caffeine jolt). I give this self-indulgence a two thumbs up! Now, my next experiment will be to test the chocolate squares in some sort of baking treat, that and use the dried cocoa mix in another baking adventure or two--and will report back here on the results.

Another surprise! Last month, Vegetable Matter had a contest on her blog and I promptly left a comment to hopefully score a win! The win did happen and I received this nearly three pound package from Hometownseeds.com of their Emergency Survival Seeds. As you can see from the picture, I am going to be well stocked in all things "seed" for quite a while. I could probably feed a small town on what I have here.

I was so thrilled with what they sent, I wrote both Robin at Vegetable Matter and Hometownseeds.com letting them know how much I loved this! I have since planted corn, beets and radishes from my assortment, as it was I had already planted many of seed types in my square foot garden. But my goodness, this was a surprise!