Thursday thanks

This week I'm thankful for the plants growing in my garden.

Pensacola is not exactly known for its farmers markets, so in search of fresh produce last year I planted a garden. Because the soil here is sandy, and because Hubby and I are renters and can't re-landscape our yard, my gardening adventures are confined to container-friendly plants.

In 2011 I had success with hot peppers, cherry tomatoes, green beans, and basil. This year I'm branching out (silly pun intended) and trying several new crops.

With any luck (and some effort) this little guy is going to turn into eggplant parmesan and spicy szechuan eggplant stir-fry.

Eggplant

These green shoots are the beginnings of what will hopefully be a bumper-crop of zucchini. Unfortunately squirrels like zucchini, and we have an over-abundance of squirrels, so keeping these for myself might be harder than I think. But I like a good challenge, especially if it involves zucchini bread and vegetarian moussaka (when paired with the eggplant from above).

Zucchini.

And these little shoots will soon show up in a salad bowl. It only took 4 days for them to sprout! I am a very proud plant mama.

This will look like a salad in 3 weeks. Really!

And last, but not least, some of you may remember that I bought a kumquat tree last November. Well... There is definitely fruit on my tree, but kumquat it is not! Kumquats are tiny little fruits - the diameter of a quarter at most. The things growing on my tree are goose-egg sized. Clearly my fruit tree was mis-labeled, which leaves me wondering: What is it?

So, what is this fruit?

Any other gardeners out there? What are you planting this year?
And does anyone know what this citrus fruit is? They're delicious, but definitely not kumquats!