Garden update

I promised a garden update.

We have gotten quite few zucchini, but just in the last couple of days we have discovered borer beetles (f you have any advice on getting rid of those, I'd surely appreciate it). The kids are in their pajamas here because many times they are supposed to be getting ready for bed when Paul and I are working in the garden, but then they trickle outside to meet us after they brush their teeth. Don't they look tired? :)

A few of our beauties that are not quite ready.

This is one of our picks.

These are our tomato plants. We have close to 40 in the garden and in pots next to the house. They are bursting with tomatoes, and where there isn't fruit, there are blossoms. I'm hoping to have enough to meet my canning needs this year.

These guys are our watermelons reaching out the side of their space. There are a few fruits growing. I'm eager to see what happens, since watermelon is usually harvested much earlier than this.

This is a salad I made with totally homegrown veggies. There is something completely gratifying about it.

One of our sunflowers. We planted only a handful. Next year I will plant a bunch more.

I don't have pictures of them, but we have been harvesting lettuce and basil in giant piles. Where the broccoli didn't grow (for some reason?), I had a bare patch and decided to throw basil seeds there to make pesto and freeze for the winter. I harvestsed what I think was about half, and froze 6 4-oz. jars of it. (Since Paul can't have dairy, I use a cheese-free recipe with raw cashews and nutritional yeast that I borrowed from a friend).

I looked back last night at pictures of the garden from early in July, and I can't believe the difference! Our garden took a while to produce, but she's pretty much bursting at the seams now. I think what took it so long was the fact that it was pretty much virgin ground, and we had to fertilize and nourish the soil quite a bit. We are working on a compost pile and will let that do its thing this winter and hopefully it'll pay off next year.

We ordered seeds online for our fall garden--carrots, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, spinach, and cilantro. So excited to get started on that once our harvest season is over! What are your plans for gardening after summer is over? Any fall/winter gardens?