Harvest Time

So earlier this year I wrote about our garden expansion. When I wrote and posted pictures then little did I know the bountiful harvest that we would start pulling from this little bit of land.

We had a garden full of squashes, berries, carrots, beets, parsnips, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, pumpkins, cucumbers, and more items I just can't remember right now. We have been blessed with a great harvest, our one pumpkin vine alone produced about eight pumpkins.  It has been a fabulous garden and we've enjoyed much of the produce. 

This is a picture of part of the garden after we had pulled about half of what was growing.in those boxes, yup we are well blessed.

One item that we tried this year was cabbage. We are not big cabbage eaters and the only reason we tried it was Eve was given one at school as part of a project, so we planted it to see. We don't have the best track record with cabbages. Laine was given a cabbage a couple of years ago for a school project and we killed it in a week. I wasn't expecting much of Eve's but it surprised me.

 Having never grown cabbage successfully we weren't quite sure when to pull it so finally in August we decided to take that baby out...we might have waited too long.

Half of the cabbage looked great, the other half was molding. Eve was still proud of what she had grown and we decided that if nothing else, those leaves make some awesome hats.

With all the harvest it has meant that my weekdays are spent canning all the produce we can't eat. So far I have canned pickles, watermelon jelly, jalapeno jelly, raspberry zucchini jelly, peach zucchini jelly, tomato sauce, and tomato soup.   Still on the menu beets, more sauce oh and a few more batches of frozen parsnips and carrots.  I feel like a pioneer woman here. 

So the garden this year was a success, we love the produce and the added space. Already we have plans for next year, items to plant, new spots for growing, and more canning ahead.