Garden Update

Our garden is in full swing. As I have the chance, I plan on going through our garden pictures and doing more progress over time slide shows like the one above, but it is really time consuming to look through all the pictures, figure out the order of them, etc. But, it is easily apparent to see that everything is very much alive and growing.

So far, as I mentioned on previous posts we have enjoyed plenty of strawberries and blueberries, and a handful of both zucchini and cucumbers. Actually, our first big batch of cucumbers (4) went into some pickles this weekend, that we gave to Blake's mom for Mother's Day.

The peppers are recovering nicely and there are many that are growing but not ready to pick yet. The peppers on the lattice are really all starting to grow. All of our tomato plants except for our hanging plants have unripe tomatoes on them at the moment, and I am looking forward to their ripening. We had our first ripe tomato on Sunday, a yellow pear, but as a huge sign of love and devotion to his mom, Blake decided to give it to her instead of us eating it ourselves. (Not my favorite variety, so I supported his altruistic choice). Although, we did technically eat our first five tomatoes in the green tomato recipe on Friday. :-) I am actually getting a bit worried about the celebrity tomato bush because there are way more green tomatoes than I can count, and I am afraid that it is so dense we will miss some ripe ones when they arrive.

As shown in the pictures above, the green beans have flowers now, which means green beans are soon to follow. Last year we had the bush beans, and they surprised us with the green beans way before we were ready. The advantage of the pole beans is that they tend to climb first and then start making their flowers, and it is easier to pick them as well.

Our carrot leaves seem to be doing well, but the carrots underneath (which we have picked here and there primarily to give the others room to grow, but also to sample how big they are) are less than 4 inches long and skinnier than a pencil. But they are growing and healthy, so we are happy about that.

Its about time for me to walk the dog, but I cannot fully express how exciting it is every year to see the garden go from tiny plants and seeds to plants huge, overgrown and giving us tons of produce. This year we are taking it a step farther will trying to preserve more of what we grow with canning (we bought a pressure canner for the purpose), freezing, and drying. I will try to keep my blog updated with our ventures into those areas and our successes... or failures. :-)