Our garden did so well this year! We planted tomatoes, jalapenos, bell peppers, strawberries, carrots, onions, radishes, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, zucchini, spaghetti squash, cucumbers, and sunflowers. We had a good harvest about every couple of days!
We found out that Logan LOVES tomatoes. He would pick them and eat them every time he went outside. We really had to watch him so that he wouldn't eat the green tomatoes. Funny story: There was one really big tomato growing and I was watching it for so long waiting and waiting for it to turn red and get ripe. I love tomato sandwiches and this one would make the perfect BLT. Well it finally turned red and was ready to be picked. So I picked it and put the big tomato with the rest of the pile and went on picking. Next thing I know, Logan has the huge tomato and he is just chowing down on it! He was eating my perfect tomato! He had the biggest smile on his tomato juice covered face so all I could do was laugh at him as he ate saying "YUM! MMM!" What a funny little boy! I told him that was my tomato and all he said was "Das Good!"
Anyway, here are some more pictures of our home grown produce:
The broccoli was a new plant for us this year but it did really well. It was so good too. Home grown vegetables are so much better than store bought. We also planted a yellow pear tomato plant that just took over everything. I don't think we will plant another one of those because it was just too much. This was the first year our cucumbers did well. We plant them every year but never get anything but this year we got a lot. We also planted Brussels sprouts for the first time this year. They grew great but by the time they were ready to pick, the aphids had gotten to them and they were full of bugs so we didn't get to eat any of them. We will have to spray them if we plant them again.
Emily wanted to plant giant sunflowers and here she is by her babies. We roasted our own sunflower seeds and got two Ziploc bags full from these two sunflowers.
The spaghetti squash did really well too. We made a lot of fun new recipes out of these. I took a picture of this spaghetti squash growing inside the fence.
After harvesting, we went to town canning everything. Below is Tomato/Jalapeno jam, Salsa, and another Tomato jam/preserve that taste like applesauce. (So good.)
The green jars are Jalapeno jelly and the bottom picture is garlic dill pickles and pickled pear tomatoes. The dill pickles are so good and they taste like they are from the store! The pickled tomatoes on the other hand were not good at all! I tried one and almost puked and Russell gagged one or two down. He did not object when I told him I was going to dump them down the sink. Oh well, you live and learn and I learned that you really have to watch your vinegar to water to tomato ratios when pickling tomatoes. Like I said before though, we had an over abundance of yellow pear tomatoes so I wasn't too sad about wasting some on this new recipe.
Later I received 50 lbs of tomatoes for free from a guy in Washington that was giving them away before they went bad. From this 50 pounds of tomatoes. I made more salsa, tomato soup, and a lot of spaghetti sauce. We are all set and our pantry is stalked with all of the stuff from our garden. We have been blessed this year!
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