Growing a Garden

We planted our first garden this spring and boy has it grown! It has over-grown actually! We got back from our trip to Europe and could not believe what our garden had turned into. We are so happy to have it. We love to go outside, walk 20 feet, pick the vegetable/herbs and walk back in and use them for our food. We also enjoy walking outside and picking tomatoes and mint leaves and just eating them straight from the garden. There is nothing better than that.

Sam loves to go out to the garden with us. He helps us pick the vegetables and eats a few tomatoes as we pull them off the plant and then he usually walks over the mint plant, picks off a leaf and sucks on it on his way back to the house. He is so funny!

Several days I have been able to go pick all of the ingredients I have needed to make salsa. Tomatoes, green peppers, onions, cilantro. I LOVE fresh salsa. Since we are starting to get more and more tomatoes, I think I will enjoy a lot more salsa in the days/months to come.

What did we plant?

zucchini

butternut squash

watermelon

cantelope

green peppers (x4)

regular tomatoes

roma tomatoes (x2)

cherry tomatoes (x2)

yellow teardrop tomatoes

green beans

cilanto

parsley

basil

sweet basil

green onions

mint

rosemary

This was the first fruit of our labors

This is the garden when it was young, before we left for Europe.

Funny note: Trisha went out and weeded the garden one day shortly after we planted it. I went out to look at it afterwards and noticied that all of our green beans were gone. I asked her what happened... She said, "those were plants? I thought they were weeds. I pulled them." Needless to say, 2 plants survived the weeding and we got about 6 beans for this seaon.

After Europe, after some pruning and after propping up the surviving tomato plants because they had fallen over. While we were in Europe, our neighbors and friends took turns coming and picking the vegetables and herbs and using them. It was a win-win situation.

Salsa ingredients

Another day of picking...

At the same time that I love our garden, I am also getting ready for it to stop growing. In particular, the squash. Why in the world do squash plants get so big and produce so much? I don't know but they have strangled several of our tomato plants. As much as I like zucchini, I think I will pass on it next year when it comes time to plant.

Happy gardening for the next few months!