Where, oh WHERE to begin????

 Summer.
Gardening.

Amish Paste Tomatoes and Tongue of Flame dried beans.

Here is a basket full of goodness.  Altogether I harvested and processed 4 Cups of the beans (after they were shelled out) and 7 pints of canned tomato sauce, and about 10 pints of frozen tomato sauce.

Green beans were good, too.

This is the result of just one picking.  I have quite a lot of beans in the freezer, two different varieties, Blue Lake bush and Italian Pole.  I packaged most of them in portions for 2 people.  I have also purchased sweet corn and froze a bunch of that as well... but that was kind of cheating and not organic like the things that I grew myself.

I have also grown and froze a few bags of peas!

Pesto made from basil that I grew from seed!

   

Potatoes were another really good crop, we ended up with 1 and 1/2 bushels!  Here is just a sample:

Onions, peppers and cucumbers were better than usual, and here is what I did with some of them:

These are refrigerator pickles and they are quite good... but will only last about 2 months since they are not canned, just fresh stored in the fridge.

Surprisingly, I have grown celery from seed and it is doing quite well.  I have cut one plant and chopped it up to freeze - the one plant gave me 3 cups!  I have several more still growing, but it can tolerate cool weather so I'm leaving it in the garden until frost is forecast.  I also have brussel sprouts  and parsnips that can wait until much later to harvest.  Just a few carrots still to dig - they were not too successful. I have beets growing in a bag, too.  Not sure if they will mature before frost?

Sadly, the squash and pumpkins were a wash, I got just a few butternut and only a couple of acorn before the squash bugs ruined all the vines....

All in all, it was a good learning year and I am pleased to have gotten as much as I did.  Next year I hope to grow even more...!