Lessons Learned In The Garden

It is official our garden is done! Jason finally pulled up the last of our plants this weekend.

The last couple of weeks we hadn't been getting too much. Most of our tomatoes were no good and we were getting a few peppers. So the time had come to say good bye to our garden for the summer.

This was our 1st year having a garden & I LOVED it!!! We are already working out plans for next years garden.

Here are a few things I learned while gardening this year...

It is wonderful, aggravating, work, but so much fun all at the same time.

I learned that 6 tomato plants are not enough. Next year we will for sure have at least 10. We had enough tomatoes to eat whenever we wanted and some extra to make some super delicious salsa. But after eating as many as we wanted there was never enough to make spaghetti sauce, tomato soup, & tons of other things I had planned with my new found love of canning. So next year there will be 10 maybe even 12.

Green beans weren't that great(probably didn't plant enough of these either) We only had enough for one meal so no fresh canned green beans for us to store in the pantry.

Jalapenos & banana peppers grow like crazy. We had one small plant of each and we were having to pick ready to eat peppers almost daily. We have been able to can some yummy pepper jelly & make several batches of stuffed jalapenos. But our pickled banana peppers didn't turn out too well so we had an abundance of them.

The birds loved our cantaloupe & would peck it before it even got big enough for us to notice they were there. If we plant any type of fruit next year we will have to devise a plan against the birds.

It takes work to grow a garden...even on days when it is too hot to breath outside the garden still needs watered and there will be fresh stuff to pick. But loving the garden gave me motivation to keep going out. And when I didn't feel like it Jake would stand in the bay window & say "we should check on the garden." He enjoyed just as much as I did which made it even more fun.

I am sad to see our garden come to end, but so excited about all the stuff we will plant again this Spring. Although there is stuff we could plant for the fall & winter we are going to take a break until the Spring.

I already know that next year along with our tomato plants we will have bell peppers(possibly yellow & red too). I would like to try strawberries and some type of lettuce. Of course we will do the jalapenos again & cucumbers too.  Then we will see what else sounds yummy when seed buying time rolls around.

All in all the garden was a great success and the canning that came as a result was super fun too!!