We really didn't spend as much time in our garden this summer as we wanted to, we had far too many weeds for my liking - and we had a few comments from people about not getting much stuff. Things along the lines of "Hmph - you always wanted a garden and you don't even time for it" and "I passed by it the other day - had a lot of tomatoes going to waste out there!" and other such not-intended-to-be-rude-but-please-consider-what-you-are-saying-before-it-pops-from-your-mouth silly statements.
This black thumb woman has tomatoes to harvest INSIDE in the middle of the cold winter - I don't need to be THAT picky about the weeds in a clay soil that desperately needed the ground cover, thank you very much!
In the end...
Well, the only thing we didn't get much of.... is photographs!
We had a few watermelons - *those* we didn't pick in time. Several were ripe in July, but July turned out to be one of those "let's a take a non-chosen trip to a 'warm place' and see if we make it back alive" kind of months. ;) Yeah, we survived! The watermelons didn't.
The asparagus, other squashes and cucumbers didn't make it in the clay soil. At least two of the people with the gardening comments are the one who did not help when they could have, when it came to keeping bare clay-filled soil moist; then made the most comments about the weeds (the weeds actually helped! They kept the ground moist by providing ground cover and kept the seeds/soil in place with their roots.). Next spring, we direct sow the seeds (these ones grew the best, over the plants we put in after sprouting) - and we cover with straw.
Pumpkins:
- We've not cut up all the pumpkins yet, but so far have now frozen enough puree to make 12 more pies; we've made 4 so far.
- We had enough pumpkins for 2 12 ounce jam jars of seeds for next year (pulled from pumpkins we weren't going to eat, those rinds chopped up and fed to the worm bin).
- We also roasted a LOT of seeds!
Tomatoes:
- We grew tomatoes we didn't plant! Turns out the tomatoes I had fed to the worms? The seeds hadn't digested, decomposed or sprouted before the worm castings were added to the garden. On top of the 25+ plants we planted from a friend's leftover farmer's market (they'd lost the labels and nobody but us wanted mystery tomatoes!), we had several more sprouting where they landed!
- A total of 17 2.5 quart buckets - plus many partial buckets.
- We have canned tomato sauces, had tons of treats with fresh tomato slices - and gifted many. And between our travels and other issues, we fed some old ones to the worms too.
- We have reds, yellows, oranges and greens. We even have tiger stripes! Awesome!
In that patch of weeds?
- Without trying, we harvested 10 more pumpkins and 3 more full buckets of tomatoes.
The messiest image of our back porch! We had old boxes we were composting some and burning others ---- but we also had plants on the back porch: carrots, elderberry, basil, cilantro, motherwort (that one wasn't supposed to be there) and a few others I can't recall off the top of my head.
One evening we collected the above (2 pumpkins in his hands) and below (4 pumpkins in the one bucket, 3 more carried in my arms, and half a bucket of tomatoes). We didn't even try.
Hmmmmmm...... PUMPKIN SEEDS!!!!!!
