Ze Garden, continued. Today's Harvest.

Today, after hanging some towels on the line, I poked around the garden. I'm glad I did! I pulled 5 zucchini out of the boxes (I think they are too big, and will have to be used for breads. Plus, my children have all turned their nose up. What's up with that? Is it because it came from our back yard and not the pristine grocery store? Whut Evah. They are totally going to eat it, one way or another... I digress.)

There were also 3 cucumbers I pulled out.

The cherry tomatoes and Box Car Willie tomatoes are still green green green!

This is a small sugar pumpkin. I think some critters (racoons?) clawed at it a few weeks ago. I'm going to let it play out, and hope it hasn't ruined it. It's tripled in size since I initially found the scuffs, so I'm crossing my fingers. Because it will be perfect pie filling. There are a bunch of small melons that are only about 3 or 4" in diameter, so I'm hoping they finish before the cold comes!

The Beets leaves. They need me to harvest them again. The best way I've found to do them is to boil them like spinach... but I think I'm going to have to find more recipes.

So, these little teeny tiny carrots came out on a zucchini vine when I pulled it. I thought "Dang, I knew they were going to be mini, but that's just silly"... So, I poked around...
And a few of them were ready. This is how big they are supposed to be - but only the two were ready. I didn't plant that many - It's the first time I've tried carrots, and I really didn't know what to expect with them.


After the harvests I can get from these, I'm going to attempt to harvest seeds, too. I got the seeds from a heritage and organic certified farm in Ontario, so It would be super to save my own for next year. Tomato seeds are a bit like a science experiment, with fermenting the goo and all. eek. I've got some reading to do. I learned that to harvest cucumber seeds, I have to basically let one cucumber sit on the vine until it's tough and beyond being able to eat. This gives the vine the cue to stop production.

So, now I'm going to have to look up all the plants I've got and figure out what they all need.

Also, I'm thinking next year I'll either container garden, or build more boxes, so we can do some different foods in addition to what we're doing now.

This year has been a good "first" year of having a bigger garden. I know now what to do with the plants next year to make it work better. My brain spins and whirrs with ideas! Growing our own food makes me happy :)