Garden Bounty

This year our garden was amazing! We try to grow some sort of garden every year, but with varying degrees of success. We've built a couple of Square Foot Garden boxes in the backyard, but I wanted more space for some of the plants to spread out, especially the squash and pumpkins that take over whatever area they're planted in. So we pulled up some old bark and landscape fabric bordering the back fence, loosened up the soil, and planted. I wasn't sure what to expect, without knowing how good the existing dirt was. But as it turned out, the plants that we planted in the plain old dirt did at least as well as those that we planted in the Mel's Mix in raised boxes!

We had so much zucchini, tomatoes and summer squash that we ended up leaving baskets on the corner with a "free sign" for people to take. I loved having fresh basil and parsley whenever a recipe called for them. We even had a volunteer mini-pumpkin plant that popped up in one of our front yard flower beds!

Rachel next to a really long pumpkin plant.

The garden taking over

Rachel with our very heavy peach tree.

Those peaches, a few days later. Brent and I canned dozens and dozens of jars of peaches and pears. We were so blessed this year!

Broccoli plant

Emma was proud to show off the veggies she picked.