Can’t let summer get too far in without making a report on this year’s garden. And thank God for the garden! With all this staying home, it has been my salvation. It’s really been keeping me busy these past few weeks and looks like it will continue to do so for a few more weeks. 2020 may have wreaked havoc in many parts of our lives, but it sure has been a great year for the garden!
I’ve been growing a vegetable garden every year for about 10 years now, and I’m still amazed every time I see this…
…become this:
Or this…
…become this:
The first two things we planted this year were onions and sugar snap peas.
Onions
We just harvested all of our onions yesterday and are quite happy with this year’s results. I had asked my brother Steve about onions because he and his wife Karen always have such pretty ones, and I have not had much luck in the past. After texting with him, I ordered from the same place he uses. I loved that they sent emails from time to time on ways to help your onions produce better. I followed all of their advice. Now granted, we lost a good number of them early on because of too much rain. But here is what we ended up with:
We have NEVER grown one as big as that big one on top, so we are quite excited! Next year should be even better!
Peas, etc.
This was also the best year ever for our sugar snap peas!
Our beets, lettuce, spinach, and radishes all did great. That’s all done except for the red leaf lettuce. It’s still producing for us!
Green Beans
The green beans! Oh, my! When they first started coming in, I thought maybe I should have planted more. But then…they went C-R-A-Z-Y!
So nice to have my youngest here to help me pick them! It can be fairly back-breaking. I’ve always thought the garden green beans taste so much better than anything you can get at the store…even in the produce department. But it was nice to have that belief confirmed by Cara a few days ago. They’ve been in Houston the past couple of weeks and bought fresh green beans at the store. Even my granddaughters didn’t think they were as good as the ones from my garden!
These kept me busy a couple of weekends ago making spicy dilly beans and freezing the rest. I spent the very next weekend doing it all over again with the following week’s harvest. I have 4 gallon bags in the fridge right now that I need to freeze! But they are finally done. I plan on pulling them all up tomorrow morning.
Pickling Cucumbers
The cucumbers have REALLY been keeping me hopping, but happily so. I was eager to get my stock of pickles back up, and boy have I! Early on, Helen helped me out some.
Here she is putting cucumbers in jars.
And here she is ladling in the brine.
Big Eagle has been a big help with them lately. He helps peel the garlic, and he really does better at quartering them and making them the right length for the jars than I do.
So far we’ve put up close to 100 quarts, and they’re still coming!
To make all those dill pickles, you need dill, of course.
Dill
Here’s Edie showing how tall the dill was on the last day of May. It’s about 2 feet taller now. Every year we have to watch for caterpillars that like to eat the dill. They can take it down fast! Cara has been really good at helping me keep an eye out for them, and picking them off when we find them.
Then one day I saw a caterpillar on the dill, but it was in the clutches of a spider! Cara got this picture:
I’m happy to say since the spider has taken up residence in the dill, we haven’t really had a problem with the caterpillars. 😁
Marigolds
One thing I did differently this year was to plant my marigolds from seed, and I couldn’t be happier with how they grew!
I’ve even been able to keep the cucumbers from vining into them. Yay!
I just love the bright colors! And I saved some money by not buying transplants this year. Always love a win like that!
Bell Peppers
Whatever the variety of pepper plants I bought at HEB this year, I need to make a note. They’re wonderful! It’s the first time I’ve grown bell peppers that actually equal the quality of a store-bought one. The ones I’ve grown in the past have been thinner-walled. These are great!
Here are the first pickings.
I made stuffed peppers with them the other night, and forgot to take a picture before we ate. But here are the leftovers. Yum!
Tomatoes
And that brings us to the tomatoes. This year the plants have been LOADED.
This is the bottom area of one of the Celebrity tomato plants. They all look like this! A veritable NEST of tomatoes down at the bottom. Tons more above, as well. And now they’re all beginning to ripen!
This is what we have in the house right now. And I haven’t gone out and picked today, so I know there are more ready to come in. I did half Celebrities and half Romas this year. I want to use the Romas in my canning. I’m hoping I’ll end up with a thicker product that way. The Celebrities are just for slicing and eating. There were a dozen more of them this morning before I went to the dentist (which I consider the riskiest thing I’ve done since COVID) this morning, but there’s no way we can eat all of them, so I have to share. I’ll have to be getting on those Romas soon, and get them preserved.
That’s how my garden grows this year! How about you? Did you grow a vegetable garden this year? Maybe your garden leans more toward leafy plants and flowers. Either way, I would love to hear about it! It all interests me. Feel free to respond in the comments about that or anything else on your mind. In the meantime, I’ll be playing with my veggies!
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