Garden Update, August

We have grown a garden most every year since Ryan and I were married!  This is by far the best one we have had yet!  It's been lots of fun and giving us lots of food!  We love it!  Remember when I took you on this quick tour earlier in the season.  Check it out it's fun to compare how things have grown!  So amazing!

We have pole beans ready to harvest.....

and some of the cabbage looks ready too!!!  We have picked lots of peas and we keep getting more.  The secret to peas all season is a fairly cool shady spot!

Remember how small they were before!  

We strung the tomatoes up differently this year and broke off the excess leaves and branches.  We have been amazed at how many more tomatoes we have gotten and how much faster they have ripened just by stressing and training the plant a bit!  We have already picked a bucket full and another bucket full or more is about ripe.  LOVE IT!  We have never had Tomatoes ripe in August before, in fact a lot of times they weren't ripe before the frost.

Kale, Kale, Kale all season long!!!

All kinds of peppers are ripening.  Jalapenos, Bells, Anaheim, Cayenne and others!

We have loved having fresh basil to put in our recipes!  So good!

And we just love our blackberries!

Even though it tried to attack us! ;)

I just love having a herb garden.  Look how tall the evening primrose is, and it's about ready to bloom!

Apples......Mmmmm we can't wait for the apples!

Charly helped me harvest our beets!

We found the easiest thing to do was to put them all in a large tub tote thing. ;) And then wash them off.....



















.....then cut the greens off without cutting the beet.  They will keep better this way until I can freeze and/or pickle them.  I keep them in bags in the fridge until I'm ready they will keep for a while that way.



















The greens I also bag and put in the fridge after they are washed and dried they won't keep as long though so we will steam some to eat and use some in salads then freeze the rest for smoothies!

I am finding the best hint I can give you about gardening is to just do it and keep on trying.  The soil improves every year by tilling in the garden after harvest in the fall and adding organic material in the spring.  So much of gardening is just trial and error.  Practice, practice, practice!!  Just like anything the more you do it the better you will get at it.  Hardest thing with gardening is that when you mess up you usually have to wait until the next year to try it again.  I have decided to try keeping a garden journal to help me remember things from year to year, what worked and what didn't!  I went looking and found lots of them free to download online I think this one is my favorite Simple, not too many pages, yet has enough to be thorough!  Next year I'm for sure going to remember to start pepper seeds a good 2 weeks before everything else.  Who knew they took so long to germinate! ;)  Happy gardening hope you are all expecting lots of harvest!