My Home Garden

Do any of you garden? I'd love to hear some of your favorite things to grow! Napa Valley just got a much-needed rain bath, and I woke up to these beauties smiling at me this morning.. I have to admit -- one of my favorite things to grow is zucchini, but not completely because of the zucchini! Zucchini does have great skin benefits as a quick, hydrating face wipe (just easy, fresh slices) with vitamins and nutrients to help aid in collagen formation and great benefits for oily and acne-prone skin. Leave on 5 minutes and rinse. (plus, you can stuff and eat the flowers! )

Here's a little peak at my home garden. Of course, as a chef, growing my own food is "the dream". But, regardless of being a chef, I have always found gardening and growing things to be quite fascinating. My mom always kept houseplants when I was a child, and she would take me with her to the nursery to let me pick out my own plant (I usually named them too). It still excites me to sprout seeds, or see the first flower on a tomato plant, and I absolutely having a colorful backyard full of life.
I just finished putting up this trellis for my haricot verts (green beans) which are also one of my favorite things to grow. ;) They taste so sweet and buttery when they're fresh, plus they grow so fast, it's fun! Good motivation to eat my veggies cause there are more on the way tomorrow. Just past the beans you can see a few rows of leeks - my first time growing those - plus I have 4 different tomato plants and a whole lot of peppers! I planted a few kinds, and more than likely those won't be going on my face....more than likely. You never know though, we do some crazy things! Most of the other plants, however, especially the herbs, have excellent skin uses. So, aside from being fun and providing nourishing foods, a home garden can also give us ways to care for our bodies on the outside. Pretty neat!

Loving the pretty purple flowers that grow on beans, I keep waiting for my excitement to fade with the next flower but it never does!
I decided to plant some little gem lettuce and arugula right next to my little herb area because lettuce is just so darn easy to grow.. I like to grow different lettuces, partly because it really is so much more convenient than buying it at the store. I can't think of how many times I've gotten lettuce to make one meal, and the rest goes to waste. With growing it myself, I can pick only what I need, and it's completely fresh! I definitely plan to put some other lettuces in soon, but I think I'll be starting those from seed instead of buying plants to get more yield. My goal is to plant in cycles to keep fresh foods available, but I'm not exactly an expert gardener (nor do I have loads of free time), so we shall see how it goes! For now, I am just so darn happy to have this little bit of food growing in the backyard. After living in Northern California for almost 4 years with almost no yard, it's about darn time.