Holy Tomato

I tried gardening, organic gardening for the first time this year. I had a VERY difficult start with all our rain, but all in all had a wonderful first year in the garden. I grew tomatoes, carrots, green peppers, cucumbers and zucchini. The most successful was by far the cucumbers! It was very enjoyable to go out in the afternoon and pick our vegetables for dinner that night. I made zucchini bread, lots of fresh tomato sandwiches and used the green peppers in a variety of recipes. Connie had asked me if I wanted to can any of my tomatoes around July. My tomatoes got off to a slow start, but I was interested in learning how to can. And boy did we can. I ended up buying a box from a farmers market and combining that with what I had in my garden and we canned 21 quarts. No small task for sure. Allison got in on the fun although I wanted to keep her out of the kitchen while things boiled and were transferred from the cooktop to the sink. And it was messy.....once we were done, I had little desire for ANY type of tomato product. But now that they are done I am enjoying making my own tomato sauce, soup and lasagnas. :)

Our Garden

Brent and I are so excited to finally have a yard large enough to have a vegetable garden. We also thought it would be a good experience for Allison. So, last weekend we got to diggin'! Brent borrowed a tilling machine from Victor Vito (painter extraordinaire!) and began creating the space. We are only going to initially do a garden that's about 8'x16' size, we aren't sure about the soil's pH and we just want to see how our first year goes! After the area was created we put some lime and poo-poo down for fertilization. Our goal is to make it an organic garden, so we plan on getting a composting machine. We'll see how that goes! Some of our future vegetables needed to be started as seedlings, so we got that going too. Allison helped with counting out the seeds and filling up the cups. We will put our seeds in the ground around Mother's Day. My landscaping husband can't be bothered until the threat of freeze is over and with the way this winter has been, the later the better. I am really looking forward to walking outside my back porch and picking out vegetables for dinner! (Brent not so much! :) )