Summer Harvest

Every year since I moved back to Iowa I have tried to have a bountiful garden.  Unfortunately I have always run into some problem.  One year I had to leave for a family emergency for a week and the weeds got out of control.  When my sister in law came over to mow my lawn for me she mowed over the garden too.  I wasn't upset in the least because I had been thinking about doing the same thing.  Another year I couldn't get my hubby to help me work up the ground.  At the time I was about 6 months pregnant so all my abdominal muscles were already stretched to the limit.  There was no way I was getting anymore work from them. 

This year was different!  My youngest daughter was almost 1 and the older one was 6.  I took them out to the garden with me to play in the dirt.  The older one was not too thrilled about it at first.  Her favorite part was watering the seeds.  The younger one loved it! All of it! From getting dirty to throwing the dirt so it got in her hair and even taste testing it.  She just loves to be outside.  Later in the summer I would spend the evenings after supper pulling weeds.  It was cooler and I could leave the little ones at the house with Daddy!

I had an overflow of tomatoes and peppers! Which works out fine because I know how to can those.  I had big dreams of serving fresh green beans and carrots at supper and making salads with all the veggies that came from my own back yard!  Well I did serve green beans one night for supper but they didn't go over very well.  The carrots never even popped out of the ground.  I did have some awesome salads with my accidental cherry tomatoes.  When I bought my plants they were all labeled as large tomatoes.  But one produced small cherry tomatoes.  I am unsure how that happened but it was a good accident! 

Here are all my canning projects from my tomato bounty!

We did crushed tomatoes, tomato juice, salsa, canned jalapenos and two jars of canned habaneros.
It will be a wonderful in the winter to be able to use my garden tomatoes to make spaghetti or lasagna and the hubby has already started plundering the tomato juice for breakfast!