God’s bounty in MY yard!

this is yesterday’s harvest…

yup. the garden is doing what it’s supposed to be doing. these are just some of the 100’s of cherry tomatoes i’ve brought in in the last month. i’ve had 2 big tomatoes before yesterday, but HOLY COW! i think i’ll need to share those. this is one of 2 red cabbages i’ve got. it’s beautiful! we had some in our salads last night. YUM! dave and shane were good sports and tolerated it. layla was ecstatic, as was i. and micah just ignored it (as he does with most food). that was just yesterday! i don’t think the other one will be as good, since it got attacked early on by some sort of bugs and still looks kind of pathetic. but we shall see.

looking back, we’ve had 2 full meals’ worth of green beans (one of which i tried to steam w/out any water, so that was a bust). kind of pathetic, considering i’m doubtful we’ve got more than a few beans left on the plants. the crows were out to get me this year and pulled out or plucked off most of my plants just after they sprouted. but the survivors were fruitful, there just weren’t enough of them. next year, i’m definitely switching to pole beans. the bush beans just don’t produce long enough.

my 1 cucumber plant gave me 6 or 7 wonderful cucumbers. i was ready to call it done, but yesterday i discovered new leaves, fresh flowers, and baby cucumbers starting on it! i’m so excited.

i’ve had a little lettuce. my first 3 green lettuce plants did okay at first, but when we got back from our trip to california, something had eaten them. the red lettuce that angie gave me disappeared and then came back about a month later. i’ve had a few little leaves off of them, here and there, but they never got very big, and now a few of them are starting to bolt. oh well, they added a little color to our salads.

i’ve also got 2 ‘big’ pumpkins and 3 mini pumpkins that are on my front porch. there are a few more mini’s on the vine that i’m waiting to ripen up a bit before cutting them. there’s 10 or so more big ones in various stages of green and orange.

and then there’s the squash… i didn’t plant squash. well, i didn’t intend to plant squash. my dad had several pumpkin starts in his greenhouse that he gave me. i told him that i ONLY wanted pumpkins, no zucchini or squash this year. well, either one of those starts was a squash, or i had one volunteer from the squash i grew (and let rot on the vine because we don’t eat it) last year, but i’ve got squash. LOTS OF SQUASH! i’ve got a couple almost ready to harvest, and 10 or more still getting bigger. sheesh! murphy’s law, right?

what else? i salvaged a fair amount of strawberries from the slugs and my freezer is FULL of bags of frozen raspberries, just waiting to go on ice cream or into yogurt. YUM!

contrary to my early predictions, this year’s garden has been almost a complete success. my snap peas were a bust, thanks to the deer who couldn’t leave them alone. as soon as the plants got big enough to produce any peas, they would eat them. corn was a bust too, mostly because the stupid crows kept pulling them out. the ones that did survive were wimpy and only produced a couple wimpy ears that weren’t really fit for human consumption. and so the search for a good corn variety continues. my blueberry plants had a handful of blueberries on them this year (they were new last year), but the birds got all but about 2 of those. i’m hoping for more next year.

i’m already starting to think about next year’s garden. and the best ways to pest-proof it. i’m totally turning into mr. mcgregor!