Harvest

We just brought in the garden. Boy did it produce this year. Some things were great, tomatoes not as much but that ok we'll just shoot for more next year. But considering I brought all this in the day after I picked apples was a little overwhelming to me. My kitchen looked a mess for a solid week. Then we had company over so I had to clean it and now it is back into canning mode, cause I still have more to do tomorrow.

tomatoes, cabage, apples, crenshaw mellons, zucchinni, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, and the strawberries aren't in the picture

Half of my grape juice before it was processed. Oh it's so pretty.

Still picking

Here it is October 26th and this is what we just walked in the house with. Our last picking of Strawberries! It's supposed to freeze tonight.

Fruit of our Labors

Last year we planted strawberries. Oh that has seriously been the best purchase EVER. This year we added 3-4 more rows to what we already had last year. Because we did this we had to make an additional garden. But like I said it was the best thing we have ever done. Our kids don't know how truly spoiled they are. Yea it's nice to have fresh veggies, but my kids don't care for zucchini all that much, but strawberries now that's a different story.

See that colander full? We pick that many every other day. So yes we are bringing in quite a few, and they aren't small by any means most of the time they are as big as the ones in the store if not bigger. I have 3 gallon bags in the freezer and could have more but I've already made jam 3 times and more pies, and German pancakes and waffles and shortcakes then we care to mention (well at least you know why we've put on some extra pounds. Our kids love them and so do we!)

Kenna knows not to go into the garden so she well stand out side and point and yell Momma, Momma, she can see them and tells us where the good ones are. She doesn't like it when you tell her it's not quite ripe, she just keeps telling you to pick it anyway. But she can eat them I'll tell you. We all can! Railey though, she's our picker and she knows which ones are to be picked.

Yea we have eaten lots of those strawberries before we took the picture. This year as we were starting our seeds in the office, we had extra dirt without seeds in them and Steve happened to be eating watermelon and just spit one of the seeds into the dirt. Well look what we got as a result. It's the only one we got but oh my goodness was it sweet and good! Now if only those cantaloupe will hurry and ripen --we have tons of those!

Yes when you have lots of Strawberries you have to cover at least some in chocolate. This was our first and only time doing this and we just did it last night for FHE. Why have we not been doing this all summer? Oh yeah the diet thingy.

Not only have our strawberries done great but so have our raspberries. They are just coming on again. Back in June we got about 4 gallons worth and are expecting at least that many if not more within the next month. Our girls will eat those just as fast as they will the strawberries. This morning I picked that little container full (not to many like I said they are just barely coming on) and they barely made it into the house before the girls had them finished off. Oh we love us some berries.

Every time we go out to pick both Steve and I comment on how this was the best idea ever as well as how our kids have no idea how good they have it. Now if the blackberries will hurry and get bigger, we only got 5 berries this year!

Gardening

We are so excited to be gardening! Now if the weather would just start cooperating. We decided to have three different gardens this year. Well that meant tilling up more grass and creating a new spot for a garden. So we took the opposite corner of the yard (from where our original garden is) sprayed it with round-up, waited 3 weeks and then tilled it in last Saturday. Here are some pics but it really is bigger than it looks. It's at least as big as what we already have if not a little bigger. This will be for our annual garden for things like beans tomatoes, peppers, squashes, melons, etc.

all sprayed and dead (the mound will be included in the garden)
there's Steve tilling away (it took like 5-6 gos with the tiller to get it nice and fluffy)


all tilled in no more mounds just the curbing that needs to be disposed of-- oh yea and the tree!

Here's our perennial garden. We have raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, and asparagus.

We had lots of Strawberry starts so the kids had a brilliant idea to sell them. But we had no luck. They gave up after 10 minutes of dancing up and down and yelling every time a car would drive by. So if anyone wants them we have over 20 starts you can just have!

Here's our spring garden. Lots of onions, lettuce, broccoli, radishes, and spinach
The radishes and spinach popped up last week and are really taking off now. If only the onions would start growing, but they do like a little warmth

Our little Kenna, the gardener (well at least she takes after every other member in this family and loves to play in the poopy dirt)

Fruits of our Labors

We have had a lot of fun gardening with the neighbors this year. We worried about how it would all work out but it's been fine and actually fun when we go over for picking night and end up just chatting all night while the kids play with each other on the tramp. It has produced lots and lots of food and not quite as much as we would have liked in other areas (beans and corn). Now if we can get the rest of the tomatoes to ripen we will be set with our food storage as well.

I used to laugh at Dad when we would sit down to the dinner table growing up and he would go through everything that had come from the garden. You could definitely see the pride in his eyes and the saliva in his mouth on the nights that everything on our plates was from the garden. Well Dad they say you turn into what your parent were/are. Well I guess we're there! We go through the list every night for dinner and a couple of times we have been able to say that everything was from the garden like the picture below. Pure delishousness.

carrots, green beans, zucchini-onions, broccoli, cucumbers, green peppers

We've done onions before but they are always about the size of a baseball. Well not this year. I think we've finally figured out how to grow them well. Look at this guy, the picture doesn't do it justice, it was seriously a lot bigger than a softball.

NICE MELONS!

(totally Steve's idea-he's been planning this photo for the past week, to bad they weren't the same kind-crenshaw and cantaloupe)

LOOK AT THOSE MELONS

Summer Garden

Last night Steve was in charge of an EQ social. He planned for us to go to the new Harley Davidson shop for dinner and to look at bikes then we headed over to Cooks green house and got 20% off all our plants. It was a lot of fun and we were actually surprised at the great turnout we had.

But what did that mean? Today we planted everything. We got together with the neighbors and decided what we wanted to plant then purchased and then planed today. It was a lot of fun to do it all together. I hope we will be thinking the same thing at the end of the summer. J/K. We are doing the garden in 3 yards. The biggest garden has potatoes, corn, beans, squash, and cantaloupe the others have strawberries, celery, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, broccoli, basically all the smaller stuff. Now we just need to work out a watering and weeding schedule and stick to it. I think we are all definitely looking forward to the harvest!

here's the Fowler Garden

heres the James Garden

here's the Ellis Garden

Spring Garden

Steve has been so excited to garden this year. After taking a gardening class he has been very anxious to try out everything he has learned. So into the ground went all of our spring garden plants--strawberries, celery, lettuce, onions, broccoli, and cauliflower. Lets see how it all turns out. He keeps promising that they won't freeze. We are able to grow things that normally we don't because we are going in with our neighbors and using up all our space and making it so we don't all have 10 tomatoes but share the crop. It will be interesting and we'll see how it all works out.