Summer Garden

After three years of gardening, and through MANY trials and errors, I think we've finally gotten this gardening thing down a bit.
Now don't let me fool you, it's nothing that impressive. Just some shabby homemade boxes and lots of pots and buckets with thriving plants in them. But we've managed to not only keep things alive, but actually harvest some pretty good stuff!
I do say "we", because although this was "another one of moms projects" the kids and hubby have been instrumental in the success of this years garden. If I ever forget to water or don't have time to harvest or weed, they're on it before I even have to ask!
It's been a great family project. And everyone gets so excited when we get to eat something we are responsible for producing ourselves!

Here's what we've got going on now.

Crook neck squash. I kill squash, and melons. Or practically anything on any sort of a vine. So we are super excited that we've managed to get a handful of these little guys this year!
And they are soooo delish!


Onions. Three varieties actually. We've had yellow, white & purple. These, aside from the tomatoes, have been our most successful crop this year. I actually gave a couple bagfuls away to some family because we harvested that much in a week!


Broccoli. We had more success with these year before last. I skipped growing these last year, and this year it seems my plants are far bigger than the broccoli heads themselves. But what little bit we've gotten has tasted just fine.


Bell peppers. We have a couple bell pepper plants that are doing well. We've only gotten a few peppers so far, and only two have been edible because I let them go too long and the withered up under the hot sun. We also have several jalapeno and serrano plants. They took over an entire garden bed last year and I still have peppers in my freezer that the hubby roasted for future use. But they don't seem to be doing very well this year. I chalk it up to putting them in a more shallow bed this time. I don't think they've been given enough space for their massive roots. Like I said "trail & error", I've made a note in my garden journal to change it up next year.


Tomatoes.
Here we have what were supposed to be Romas. Every year when I buy my tomatoes from the local hardware store I carefully select my varieties but I never end up with what I thought I was getting! The plants are always hearty and do extremely well, but they are always marked wrong!
In this case, these Romas ended up being grape tomatoes. Either that, or I have dwarf Romas!


There was one "early girl" plant in the carton of "Romas". So at least we got one full size tomato variety!


Like I said, they are great starters. Quite hearty and they produce really well. I was just looking forward to canning some tomatoes!


Potatoes. I have both a regular potato plant and a sweet potato plant that resurfaced this year. We tried growing them last year but ended up pulling them out when they didn't produce. We apparently missed a couple of roots, because up popped these plants out of nowhere!


Herbs.
Our herb garden has been great this year too! I've had plenty of fresh herbs to use in our dinners and I've even dried out some for next winter.
We've had sage, thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary, parsley, lavender, dill, chives, and mint! (Sorry, I've got no photos right now, and I'm too lazy to go take some at this moment...)


Now for the most exciting part- drum roll please......




We finally grew a watermelon! This little guy is our first harvest! They are a smaller variety and we waited just a bit too long to pick him hoping he would get bigger, so he wasn't quite as sweet as he should have been. But the kids devoured it just the same!


Isn't it so pretty!


And there you have it. Our summer garden!

Tell me, what are you growing this season? What are your most successful crops? Or if you don't have a garden, what fruit or veggie to you most look forward to in the summer?

Thanks for stopping by!
~Rey