Our garden progress

This was our first year living in New Jersey and we were very excited to start working on a garden again. While we were living in Hawaii we tried several times to have a garden and it never worked out for us. You would think it would be the perfect location. After all it was always a beautiful 85 degrees with not a cloud in the sky. Unfortunately we found that was part of the problem. Turns out vegetables need a bit of shade every now and then or they fry. They also like to have some rain every once in a while. Oh and giant African snails that eat everything in sight really don't help matters either!

Anyways we were so excited this year to get our garden in the ground. By "we" I mean my oldest daughter and I. She is so much like her mama it is a bit scary at times. Now that the growing season is almost over we are enjoying lots of great vegetables and already planning what we are going to plant for this fall as well as items like garlic that will need to be planted this fall to be harvested next year. 

Our carrots were a bit small....okay a lot small! We have a compaction problem it seems. I am planning on growing them in a raised bed with loose dirt next year so hopefully they will do better.

My tomatoes on the other hand are out of control and doing wonderfully. We planted a variety of different types. I think the tear drop ones are my favorite.

The purple beans were not a hit at all. They tasted like dirt or so I was told. We will probably skip the beans next year since I couldn't bribe anyone to eat them.

 My potatoes were a total loss.  I only got the handful you see here before my plants rotted in the ground. Way to much rain this year. Learned a lesson there as well. We are going to be doing them in containers next year with drainage holes. My cucumber you can see go too much rain as well. They are doing better now and I actually have my first one on the vine right now. I am looking forward to eating it! I had wanted to do pickles with them but I seriously doubt I will get that many from them. My peppers as you can see are doing well also. We have several types that are just now getting to the point of being ready to pick.

 You know the best part of growing your own veggies? Eating them :) Here we have a BLT pizza made with fresh veg out of my garden. Mmmmmm it was good!