The Great Garden!

Those who follow us on FaceBook are well aware of our ongoing project garden! I realized, however, that I have not shared it with those of you who only follow us here!

As you may recall, we planted a small garden last year... pumpkins and zucchini mainly. Most of the planting was done past the peak planting time, as our dear Cole decided to surprise us and arrive a little early. We learned our lesson and vowed to start earlier this year!

We started with many of our plants in the small packs above, not knowing how things would turn out... and Much to our Surprise... Everything grew!

The jalapenos did not do as well as we would have liked, but with such a cool summer, we're very happy with what we did get!
We decided to add green beans this year. Chris built an incredible tee-pee out of white PVC pipe and we planted the plants at the base of each pipe length... with the Intention of the beans trailing up the pipe and creating a sort of "fort" for the boys to play in. While his heart was in the right place, I failed to do my part in the purchasing department.

Note to self: Do not buy the Garden Beans next year as the plants only reach 12 inches tall!

Our goal may have been achieved had I purchased a trailing variety! Ahh... next year!
For a short time we had cilantro. I loved it on my eggs in the morning and even just the smell when we chopped it. Anyone who has gardened with their kids, I'm sure, will attest to the a plant's greatest enemy... A kid who wants to be sure they're Flooded every second of the day! Aside from too much water, Clayton helped "weed" this particular pot and the cilantro were history!
On a whim... I bought a 6-pack of yellow crookneck squash for something like $1.50 at the grocery store. Figured why not... right?! Ha! Just stay tuned for what we got in return!
A lone cucumber plant survived and produced about 2 dozen cucumbers. They were not exactly what we'd call a favorite with the boys, though they didn't mind Dredging them in Ranch dressing!

For as small as the plants were, and we did lose about half of them, the green beans that we got from them were incredible!

This year, we planted our pumpkins in late June/first of July. Chris decided we needed some Huge pumpkins, and planted a half dozen 100 lb. pumpkin plants! This was the first one we noticed... see below for updates...

By July the crookneck squash were mildly Out Of Control!! It would take the better part of an hour just to pick them all if we missed a day!

On this day, I also picked some green onions... that smelled heavenly!... an onion and some green beans. I'm pretty sure the green onions were my favorite, I'll have to remember to plant them in stages next time, about a row every two weeks, to better stretch our supply. They were fantastic on Everything!

Clayton was the self assigned "green bean taster guy"! He took a bite out of this one right off the plant, and while the picture does not give a good idea of how the test went, when he finished this one, he reached for a second!

Auntie Annie lives close now, so we get to see her pretty often! She brought this Target $1 Spot sunflower pack over to try with Clayton. The seeds sprouted in this little cup in our kitchen window and I later transplanted them out to the garden.

Ahhh... the yellow crookneck... all in a day's work!

Cole helped me split them up into bags for Grandma & Papa and some of our friends and neighbors.

The pepper plants did well at first, we planted a sweet pepper mix that produced green bell peppers and this larger green variety. They were very good, but the plants did not last as long as we hoped.

Tis is a mixture of green onions, white onion and jalapeno from the garden... to be used for dinner!