Holy harvest Batman.

I took advantage of our cool morning and wandered out into the garden to do some work. I'm glad I did. I was able to get a pretty big harvest out there this morning.

today's score

The kids were so excited about the carrots being ready to pull. They probably could have gone longer in the ground, but we being the impatient sort, decided to pull half of them this morning. I couldn't clean them fast enough and they were pounding them down. I had to cut them off because I was hoping to use them in a stir fry.

Connor and Aidan tearing through some carrots.

The patch where I had the beets and carrots is almost completely harvested and cleared out and we are going to put some more beet and carrot seeds down and see if we can get one more big harvest before frost hits. I figure that we planted those seeds at the end of May and it's now the end of July, so if we planted this weekend we might be able to get them the first of October.

I am starting to try and figure out what we are going to do with our tomatoes. I have four sitting here ready to eat now and the plants are FULL of them. They are starting to get pink and Tim and I are having a disagreement about what to do with them. He wants to make sauces and can them and I think I would prefer to just can them with no flavors and then we can make different sauces when we open them up. Maybe we'll compromise and do half and half.

getting pink

almost ready!

The zucchinis are doing great. What a cool plant. You plant a little seedling and it turns into this monster plant that keeps giving us tons of zucchinis. There are three on the one plant getting ready to be pulled and I pulled a large one off the other plant this morning. So far, we have made two loaves of zucchini bread, had a chicken/zuke stir fry and we made something we saw on Jamie at Home (one of my fave cooking shows!), Zucchini Carbonara. We made it with whole wheat pasta because that is all we have, but it was delish!! I still have a half a zuke in the fridge that I will probably just cut and eat with some hummus.

zuke getting ready for picking

bee pollinating a zucchini blossom

Tim's chili peppers are getting ready to pick also. We have four containers growing on the side of the house and we started these peppers from seed. I had them all labeled so we knew what was what and then Tim replanted them around a little bit and didn't keep track of what went where. So we now have four pepper boxes full of peppers and we have no idea what pepper is what.

Mystery peppers

The savoy cabbage is finally starting to get heads on them. Poor Tim checks on them every time he's out there and was worried because they didn't seem to be forming. He is waiting for some cabbage rolls.

savoy cabbage

The flower garden is in dire need of weeding. I'm hoping that I can enlist some help from Tim and get some done tonight. I think next year I'm going to do what my MIL did and put straw down on top of the dirt to inhibit some weed growth. I was happy to see this pretty little Foxglove still growing full force back there. We have two of these plants. One with white flowers and one with purple flowers. The white ones are doing great and while the foliage on the purple one looks great, the flowers are gone. Although, I did notice a tiny little stalk coming up that might be some more coming out.

foxglove

Well, I've got to load up the wee ones and head to the dairy for milk and eggs and then hit the grocery store. I've put it off long enough and we are down to nothing in the house. It's funny because when there's no food in the house, we don't eat. Novel idea.

Have a great day!