The Garden

My family has been gardening since 2011.  The past two years have been the best in regards to production.  I know that the Lord has blessed us mightily with such wonderful harvests of fruit and vegetables.

We have several varieties of beans this year.  Under the green bean category,  we have french cut, jade, tender green, heavyweight, and bush blue.  Under the wax bean, we have the Gold rush and, well, the wax bean varieties.  The other bean type we have is Burgandy beans which are purple at harvest but turn dark green when cooked.  So far, with nearly nine full rows of beans, I have harvested nearly 44lbs of beans.

Also planted in the large ground bed is turnips, tomatillos, onions, and tomatoes.  Tomato plants include Sweet 100, Yellow Pear, Arkansas Traveler, and Roma among others.  They are now ripening. Across from the larger ground bed are small raised beds of peas and blackberry bushes.

In the ground bed to the left of the aforementioned ground bed is corn, cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, cantaloupe, and watermelon.

Do you spot the other cucumbers? 

One of the large raised beds is filled with different lettuces from which we have had many delicious salads.   The season for lettuce is pretty much over. 

The other large bed contains salad, hot, and bell peppers; beets and carrots from last year's planting; and radishes that bolted.  Root vegetables, it turns out, do not grow fast in raised beds.

This is the first year for our peach and plum trees to have produced.  The plums were oh-so-scrumptious, not even to be compared with the ones you purchase from a store.   Unfortunately, we have an abundance of squirrels.    The wasteful creatures stole every last one of our peaches (we didn't get a single one) and all the rest of the plums after our first harvest.

Gardening is something  I have really come to enjoy doing.  I have been able to help my folks much more now that I'm understanding how it all works along with the benefits that come with all the hard work; family time, quiet time, multiple harvests, healthy food, and, my favorite thing, enjoying the fruit of my labor.