This Summer We: grew a garden

We have had so much fun this summer with our garden.

Once the plants came up, they really grew fast :)!

The first thing ready was the leaf lettuce.  We had SO much lettuce...there was lettuce for us (we ate it every single day), for our neighbors, our parents, our friends, even for my mom's chickens!  Way too much...note to self:  a little lettuce goes a long way, plant less next time ;).

The green beans were next.  We enjoyed many meals of freshly picked and cooked green beans.

There was even a little extra for me to can.  I haven't canned veggies in a long time, so that was fun :).

When the squash started producing, I got a little surprise.  I had chosen yellow squash and zuchinni seeds, the standard.  Well, the zuchinni didn't look quite right...they weren't long and thin, they were short and round.  Little balls!  I got online and looked them up...turns out they were an heirloom variety of zuchinni, perfect for stuffing and baking.  I couldn't wait to have enough of them to try a new recipe with!

Lots of yellow squash....

...carrots...

...and surprisingly, lots of sugar peas!  I really didn't expect these to grow very well, but they were second only to the over-achieving lettuce...

The two things that barely produced were the cucumbers and the flowers.  We got maybe a dozen cucumbers, enough for snacking on, but not enough to make pickles with as I had wanted to do.  Oh well, that's ok.  The flowers were sparse, we picked a few for taking inside but mainly we just left them for the bees and butterflies :).

I almost forgot the okra!  It came in quite a bit later than the other veggies, and it really didn't do that well...maybe we just didn't plant enough.  It took forever with cutting the okra every other day to get just enough for one meal for our family.

stir-fried okra

My 8 year old was so amazed at the food that we grew from just a handful of seeds :).  He made the comment..."we are SO blessed to have all this good food right in our own yard"...  smart kid ;)!