oceancat11

OK, so my veggie garden this year? ROCKED. Technically, I should say my veggie gardenS, although I have to admit it's hard to tend a garden from 40 miles away. You end up with mutant zucchini. And yellow squash. I'd take pictures for you, but our digital camera got stolen.... But, I digress.

The "garden" here at the new house was kind of half in-ground garden and half plants-in-pots-on-the-patio garden. In the ground were watermelon (this cool heirloom variety called Moon & Stars), cantaloupe, honeydew, and lemon cucumbers (which are little and round and yellow like lemons but taste like the best cucumbers you've ever had). The cantaloupe got overtaken by the other plants and didn't amount to anything, and the honeydew produced one mature fruit that we picked last week and are still eating (yum). The lemon cukes were plentiful and there's still a few out there even though the vines are looking pretty ratty. There was one watermelon picked in August but it ended up not being ripe yet. Currently, there are three large-but-unripe watermelons still on the vine that I am hoping ripen before we get a frost. They look so good I want to pick them NOW.

On the patio in pots were cherry tomatoes, regular cucumbers, green bell peppers, and sweet banana peppers. The tomatoes were awesome - I have no idea how many we ate this summer, but it was a lot. It's the awesomest thing to come home from work and on the way into the house, just stop and pick part of dinner. The plant was so huge we started calling it the tomato tree. And there's still some out there.

The other garden was back at the old house, and it got a little out of control. The zucchinis and yellow squash just grew faster than Beth's mom could pick and eat them, so some of them got to be about a foot and a half long. They're pretty funny. There's one of each still sitting on my counter right now. I had intentions of trying to make chocolate zucchini cake, but we all know I'll never get around to it.

Aside from the squash, that garden grew tons of tomatoes (the Romas were the best - we made bruschetta like it was going out of style!), a couple of eggplant, lots of pickling cucumbers (but sadly, no time to make pickles - luckily they're good in salads, too), and way back in the late spring/early summer, lots of beets (ick), radishes, and cabbage (yay cole slaw!)

At work this year, we sold fresh vegetables - sweet corn, etc. We did really well (and still are - September is harvest time, after all) but everyday we would have at least some sweet corn left over from the day before. So, we all got to bring a lot of it home. To me, sweet corn is this total buy-it-at-a-roadside-stand summer treat, so I feel like it was pretty lucky that we got to have it all summer long. I even froze some so we can bust it out in the middle of winter when we are reeaaally missing August.