Garden of Evans

Earlier this year, Jim was nice enough to build me a second garden bed. Katie and Christian helped also. We were amply rewarded with overflowing produce this year. I had more cherry tomatoes and grape tomatoes than I could do anything with (note to self: next year if Katie wants cherry tomatoes, she has to plant them in her own dang garden. It's Beefsteaks, Celebritys, Homeslices, and romas for me next year). I did freeze some of the tiny tomatoes, but really, they are kind of pain if you don't just eat them off the vine, which I don't. 

I got 6 or 7 gallons of frozen beans and that doesn't count all the beans we just ate right after picking or shared with Katie. I have several bags of frozen carrot slices and chopped green peppers and tomatillos. And I picked a gallon of carrots just today. They're the last ones. I still have lettuce growing, haven't bought lettuce all summer! 

The biggest success this year has been the bell peppers. I'd never been able to grow them before, but this year, after starting them indoors, I was happily blessed with many buckets of bell peppers. Just picked the last of the crop today. 

Aside from the decimated (due to overzealous weed-spraying on a windy day by the lawn care service) cauliflowers and brussels sprouts, the only plants to not do well were the artichokes. Oh, they grew big, but never fruited. I shake my finger at them. Regarding the cauli and sprouts, it took them all summer to recover from their near-fatal poisoning, but I checked today and there are 3 cauliflowers growing and several stalks worth of brussels. Hopefully the brussels will grow enough to harvest before everything deep freezes. 

Then there is the apple tree, which always has more apples than we can do anything with. Katie and I canned applesauce last weekend.

just a mere few of the apples we quartered for processing

This is the best part of processing apples. This mill has some quirks, but until I can find a better one that shunts the waste farther away from the good stuff, I'll be happily using this thing. 

22 jars canned, another several quarts for the fridge.

That apple saucer thing? It's actually sold as a tomato press. Until today, I had not used it for its intended purpose. But since I have so dang many tomatoes and I hate eating raw tomatoes, I sauced some up to make spaghetti sauce. 

Works like a dream! And the spaghetti sauce has been simmering on the stove for a couple hours now and making the house smell all nice and Italian. 

The gardens have been a lot of work this year, but it's satisfying work. Katie was very helpful with hoeing and pulling weeds in our gardens, even though she had her own plot in her yard. We shared produce and Marco Polo'ed garden progress throughout the summer, which was a lot of fun! Long, boring videos of individual plants and fruits... just imagine.