Summer Gardening (2020 Edition)

 So for the first time in literally YEARS we decided to put out a garden. Not just a few tomato plants here and there, I'm talking a small, community sized garden. I think I may have mentioned in an earlier post what all we put out, but in case you didn't see or read that post, I'll give you a refresher.

In the upper garden - yes, we had two - we planted tomatoes, peppers, radishes, onions, lettuce, dill, green beans, corn that the wildlife consumed and some very, very pathetic micro carrots. Let me just say that our soil is FAR too rocky for growing any type of carrot. In the lower garden next to the chicken coop we planted zucchini (yellow and green), cucumbers, acorn squash, butternut squash, yellow squash, more green beans, broccoli that failed, cabbage that failed, watermelons that were eaten by raccoons and some tiny little potatoes.

Needless to say that we spent a vast majority of the summer weeding and watering. I don't think it rained 10 days throughout the entire summer, so the garden had to be watered every single day.

We decided to try canning last year as well and ended up pickling a lot of cucumbers, canning tomatoes and even pickling zucchini. Let me tell ya, if you've never tried pickled zucchini, you are missing out, my friend. I think we picked more of those than anything! We had so, so many zucchini... like an obscene amount. I don't know how many dozens we cut up and froze and gave away, plus the amount that we pickled.

We're planning on putting out another garden this year and we'll have far less zucchini plants. I'm hoping to introduce some new produce to this years lineup. Like lemon cucumbers, okra for pickling and some different varieties of lettuce. 

I think I may have shared some gardening photos in some of my previous posts, but I tried to save them all for this one. Hope you enjoy!

Baby garden plants. This is young zucchini and tomatoes.

Our upper garden, equipped with tomato stakes.

One of our amazing basil plants that got HUGE. Didn't use it once. *eye roll*

The thyme that also got huge. I was hoping LaVaughn would make some parmesan thyme crackers, but alas, she did not.

More pretty basil.

Potato sprouts.

More pretty potato prouts.

Even more potato sprouts.

This is the lower garden where we had all out (mainly) vining plants. You can also see our flock in the background rummaging for bugs.

Onion plants.

Radish plants.

Some garden lettuce.

Baby tomatoes starting to grow.

Some of our cherry tomatoes.

Pickling cucumbers!

This was the first batch we tried pickling. We used our own spices which was a big fail. Mrs. Wages pickling pouches all the way!

This picture of pickled cucumbers and spices is probably my fave. I love the way pickling jars look.

And lastly, a jalapeno on a vine.

No comments: