End of our Garden

 Can you tell Shad enjoyed our garden this year?  I love that face!   

It was so fun to watch our garden grow this year.  We felt like we already did better than last year, which was our first.  I made a post when we first planted and the plants first started growing here, but I wanted to post a few of the progression from throughout the season:

First 3 pictures taken June 18th:

Onions (planted from starts), a few pepper plants we bought and planted since our seeds didn't really come up, and peas:

Bottom left: cucumber, top left:  cantaloupe, middle left: butternut squash, away middle: yellow squash, close middle: zucchini, and far right are 2 varieties of green onion.  (The blank section in the middle is where we planted broccoli and lettuce which the rockchuck that was under the neighbors shed and deer kept eating...)

Right: 3 varieties of tomatoes (goliath, roma, and cheery),  carrots, and 2 groups of corn, the farthest left planted 3 weeks after the taller group in the middle

 View from our window on August 7th.  You can see the butternut taking over and spilling out of the box.  You can also see what happens to the grass when you don't have sprinklers and go to Lake Powell for a week in the heat of summer...

Next 3 pictures taken August 21:

You can see the finished peas on the far right, and our thriving pepper plants.  (We actually had 2-3 pea plants turn green again and start producing peas again... it was crazy!  Shad loved the peas.)

Far right: green onions, Middle right: one broccoli plant that came out of nowhere after we thought the animals at them all.  Even though it got big it ended up growing funky and we didn't get to eat it...  Middle: you can see the huge zucchini and squash plants, and Left: you can see the butternut really spreading out and burrying the cucumber and cantaloupe.  The cucumber ended up dying but the cantaloupe still thrived under the butternut and also spread outside of the box as well.  We ended up picking 8-10 total throughout the season, half of which were really good!  Much better than last year...

Right: giant tomato plants.  (Jeff learned a trick from Dylan- if you buy the tomato plants, bury half the plant in the ground when you transplant and somehow it made the plants grow full and tall.  They all did very well!)  Middle: you can barely see a few carrots still growing, the first set of corn drying out, and the second set of corn just about perfect.

Our raspberries also grew very well, though they didn't produce this first year:

Here are a few pictures of different trips to the garden from throughout the summer.  We love harvesting our own produce!

Shad loved helping too:

 He also loved tasting everything that we pulled out.  He actually ate quite a few cherry tomatoes.  I found these two bigger tomatoes sitting around the yard while I was out doing yard work one day:

These last 3 were taken October 6, right after the first frost: 

You can see the peppers on the right a little droopy, but they survived for a little while longer.  On the left where onions were was already serving as a compost area so no problem there: 

 All 3 kinds of squash took the frost hard and completely crashed overnight:

Only the edges of the tomatoes felt the bite from the frost.  |The plants were so full that the inside stayed warm enough to survive that first night.  

After this first frost we decided to pick everything we could (except the tomatoes, which we covered with old couch plastic) since we had a few more cold nights coming up:

 

 Huge chile pepper:

 Awesome multi-colored pepper:

The only onion that did this well:

We pulled the veggies in the kitchen in a wagon and then left them there for a week or so before doing anything with them... Shad had fun moving them around the room and climbing in and out of the wagon just about everyday: 

 When I finally got around to cutting up and freezing all the peppers:

Lots of butternut squash!  Good thing they stay good forever...

We have a mystery tree growing in our yard... We've seen them around Springville but have no idea what they are.  When we moved in, there was NOTHING there. At the beginning of this tree was already taller than me!  And it grew insanely fast:

May 5th

 

 May 21st:

June 26th

August 31st

This picture was taken in Sept 2010 when we looked at our house before buying it... Nothing is there! Crazy! 

 Last but not least, we planted Forget-Me-Not seeds back in April when we planted our garden, but hardly anything came up.  This plant started growing but stayed about 3 inches for most of the summer, and we weren't sure whether it was a weed or not.  At the end of August, we looked again and discovered it had grown into little Forget-Me-Not flowers!  I'm so glad we didn't pull it out!