Gardens Galore

The veggie garden has exceeded my expectations this year. The girls love it, I love it and it takes almost no work after the initial build which was a lot of work mostly on Ryan 🙂

I’ll let the pictures tell some stories…

Mid-July … growing is under way
First harvest of peas

The peas never make it inside – the girls just eat whatever is ripe each day — it’s one of their favorite parts about visiting the garden.

Green beans – we’ve had 3 small harvests (meals worth) — not the girls favorites but I enjoy them. I’m going to look at a climbing variety for next year.
green beans
Cucumber trellis is working well – this was mid-July – now it’s covered fully and has baby cucumbers
First cucumber of the season – the kids eat 1 or more cucumbers a day
Peppers – again this was mid-July — this pepper was recently picked – it never turned orange but was delicious.
We moved the pepper plants out from under the tomatoes that got crazy — they are doing better now
Cherry tomatoes are a huge favorite – Evie and Alex eat any ripe ones they find (evie just pulls them herself – orange or red she doesn’t care) 🙂
This bed is mostly just tomatoes now with some marigolds and basil tucked in
The cucumber forest is the corner now — and doing great. I may actually do a larger trellis next year for this – it works great as the cucumbers hang down
This weekend even with eating cucumbers constantly we built up a stash
So we made pickles!

It’s been a wonderful summer in the garden. As planned we’ve learned a lot and experimented quite a bit as well. We have lots of ideas for next summer and we’re enjoying the early harvests.

Next up I have to figure out how to make fresh tomato sauce and use these awesome tomatoes!