Our little garden

This is our second year at the attempt to have a garden and so far things are turning out great! Last year we grew tomatoes (tons of them), eggplant, bell peppers (epic failure) , banana peppers and jalapeno peppers (tons of these too!) and this year we have cut back a little. We are doing Roma tomatoes, pickling cucumbers, squash, eggplant (forgot to take a picture of those because they are being taken over by the squash and their big overbearing leaves) and strawberries. So far the strawberries are my favorite! I wanted to do those last year but we waited too late to plant. We have pretty much only been able to eat one at a time, and it has been mostly the kids eating them. But the 1/2 of one that I got was really sweet! I was so proud! Sadly, a bird has gotten a few of them. Mackenlee calls them "Berry Birds" from watching Strawberry Shortcake and Logan gets really upset when he sees that a bird has dined on one of his berries. He will come up to me with this stern look on his face and say matter of factly "a bird ate MY berry!!"

Our squash are doing magnificently! I didn't realize how much room they would take up. Our poor little eggplants aren't getting any sun because of these things. They are really pretty plants and have really large, pretty yellow/orange flowers. The squash themselves, well, they kinda look like a phallic symbol. It took a while to actually get a shot of them without having to make this blog post rated PG-13. Ha! We have several that are close to being ready to pick and I can't wait to have grilled squash fresh from our garden!!

Our cucumbers are doing wonderful as well! They and the squash really took off while we were gone last week. We left on a Saturday, stayed in Texas for a week, and came back and it was like a time warp. These things had quadrupled in size in just a week!! We have several cucumbers on their way!

Our tomatoes are also growing like gangbustas. We have tons of tomatoes that are growing bigger every day. I am so ready for them to turn red but I may end up picking a few green ones so we can have fried green tomatoes one night. That is one of my most favorite things to eat during the summer.

All the kids are really enjoying the garden. They check it every day and love to give it water and pull any weeds that may have dared to grow in their garden. This was such a great way to get the kids to eat their veggies last summer. They helped grow it, they picked it and they enjoyed eating it! I hope that it will work out the same way this time! I am hoping I will have some posts about what we will be canning soon.