Garden and Veggies

This year we planted our garden again and we even planted a few new crops. The kids helped me with putting all the seeds in the ground and then they also helped water it some over the summer too. This was probably one of our most successful gardens to date.

It is always so fun to see the early stages of a garden. It seems like you can see it get bigger every day. This year I tried to leave more space in between rows. In previous years I end up getting everything growing in together.

Our first produce of the garden was snap peas. Too bad that nobody in the house really liked them. They were still producing, but I pulled them up early and replanted some tomato plants where they had been.

The next produce that started coming in from the garden was cucumbers, and there were tons of them. Last year I made some pickles and they were delicious. So, this year I decided to invest more into the canning process. The only pickles that I like are bread and butter. So, I initially made 6 quart jars of pickles. We tried them and they were delicious. I shared them with my parents and Mimi. 

This was one of our largest hauls. The produce that came in was banana peppers, zucchini, and yellow squash. 

The only reason at all that I plant carrots is so the kids can pull them out of the ground. This year the carrots did so well and the kids had a blast harvesting them. They kept calling themselves carrot farmers. Looks like I will plant another couple of rows next year too!

There was so much stuff coming in the garden that I couldn't keep up with it at times. I finally decided to make more pickles which meant that I had to go buy more jars. This time I decided to try making dill pickles, and everyone that tried them said they were good. I will just have to take their word on that.

Zucchinif tastes so good when you make it into zucchini bread. This stuff is absolutely delicious.

If you look closely you will notice some green of the zucchini peel in the spaghetti. Jennifer bought a vegetable noodle peeler. I would have never thought zucchini noodles would be good, but they were great!  I was sad when our zucchini plants died because it meant that we could no longer have fresh zucchini bread or zucchini noodles.

Later in the summer we added some new vegetables: okra, corn, and tomatoes. Having fresh produce around the house is nice. 

Next our sunflowers bloomed and they are just so beautiful. I planted some out in the front yard so that all the neighbors could see them this year. I loved this picture with the American flag in the background. 

As most of the other plants were dying, the tomato plants were just starting to produce fruit. 

The kids were wanting their picture made with our mammoth sunflowers in the backyard. These are second generation Heflin sunflowers because I planted these seeds with ones that I harvested last year. These got to about 12 feet tall and all the neighbors kept asking me what in the world I was feeding them. 

My little garden helper. This is the first year that Brinley has taken a bigger interest in helping in the garden. Landon is usually my helper, but Brinley has enjoyed picking red tomatoes all summer long. The bottom right picture was her trying to take a selfie with her tomatoes she picked.

I stopped taking pictures for some reason of all the tomatoes that were coming in. Probably because I was carrying them in by the bag full. We took canning to the next level this year. I made at least 6 batches of salsa, a batch of pizza sauce, and 4 batches of chili base. I even had a co-worker who showed me how to decorate the lids up a little bit with some labels. This is only about half of the cans that we made. We were actually running out of room to put all of the jars.

I was afraid that all the animals were going to start eating my sunflower seeds so I cut off this sunflower head and put it up to dry in the garage so that I could save all of the seeds. This thing is huge!

I was finally able to harvest the seeds. I soaked them in salt water and then baked them until they were ready to eat. I didn't quite get the saltiness that I wanted, so next time I will probably let them soak longer.

I know that summer isn't officially over yet, but I went ahead and sat out some of the fall decorations that I got from the garden. I used the dried up corn stalks and the pumpkins to get the neighborhood ready for fall. I was sightly disappointed with the pumpkins from the garden. The vines looked really healthy and had quite a few blossoms, but these were the only ones that actually turned into pumpkins. Not quite sure what happened, but we will have to pick up from one of the local orchards so that the kids can decorate some.

It is also nice to be able to put food on your table from the garden. For dinner one night half of our meal came from the garden. Cooked carrots, fried okra, bread and butter pickles, and the tomato slice all came from our garden. To me that is a success.

My tomato plants, okra, and bell peppers are still going strong so we will continue to harvest until the first frost of the year. I am so excited that we finally figured out canning so that we will be able to enjoy this harvest well into the winter and hopefully spring of next year. Maybe one day I will completely figure out the perfect combination in our garden. I even signed up to help start a garden at Brinley's new school so that kids can learn about growing plants. I just think it is so much fun to see the whole process of garden to table. If you ever want to try anything just let me know. I am more that happy to share anything that I get out of the garden. I know my family and friends enjoy getting some of the produce. Thanks for reading and God bless!