Garden Wrap Up

Our garden was a whirlwind this year.  I managed to purchase grow lamps over the winter and set up seedlings in the basement.  I started tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, broccoli, beans, butternut squash, spaghetti squash and acorn squash.  Bamm!

I got things going outside at the end of March with onion seedlings and neurotically checking to see if the asparagus was up.

April: Peas went directly in the ground.  Good puck peas!!! And I was able to start harvesting asparagus.  I won't lie I burned the first batch. It was. So. Sad.

The tomatoes, jalepeños, beans, peas, acorn squash, butternut squash and broccoli all came up from seed and went into the ground at the appropriate time.  I ran to the "DeathSpot" and picked up peppers, zucchini  summer squash and cucumbers. I also planted carrots and radishes.  I did this all before Memorial Day weekend, the lady that did my nails for the wedding might have commented about the dirt under my nails, fingers and toes. I also might have done all this planting in a tube top to prevent tank top tan.

Then we went away for 2+ weeks.

We came home and I had MADE VEGETABLES.  There were tomatoes and peppers and beans and peas and onions Oh My!  I tried to remember to weed, sometimes I even did.  I spread some compost and organic kelp fertilizer and harvested asparagus.

Then I had a pepper and the onion greens had turned yellow and fallen over, so pulled them out of the ground and I had MADE onions.

Insert around this point we also bought into a farm share.  Once a week we picked up a basket full of produce, milk and half and half; it was amazing and our grocery bill went way down.  We will do this again next year.

The onions kept very well in the fridge and they eventually went into salsa with garden peppers that was canned.

By August everything that was going to grow was producing.  I can't grow carrots or radishes in our yard after three years I'm throwing in the towel.  The broccoli never flowered (you eat the flowers) but we had tomatoes, peppers, squashes, peas, beans and asparagus.

We will eat it all!  I made sauce and salsa with the tomatoes.  The peppers and onions also went into the salsa.  Peppers also went into chili.  The bumper crop of jalepeños I used to make poppers. We got tons of corn in our farm share and I made this great roasted red pepper and corn soup. I also made two dozen pints of tomato sauce with tomatoes from the farm stand down the road. Oh! and Slow Cooker Ketchup from Simple Bites, which is amazing and easy and Bruce still hasn't stopped talking about it.

Before Sandy arrived we pulled the husks of plants, planted some garlic bulbs and mulched six inches of leaves into the garden.  Which is when I noticed that the broccoli had flowered.  Maybe next year I'll get it in the ground earlier or maybe I'll do something else.