The Bounty

I would like to say that my garden produces enough veggies to replace buying produce for a couple of months in the summer. (Or could you imagine enough to feed you for the year!?). Sadly, mine didn't qualify this year. As the end of summer is greeted by a few flakes of the white stuff, I'm quickly bringing in the last of the garden.

Here's an example of the bounty:

Count them! That's 17 tomatoes for the year! (I've never had so few that I could worry about counting them). And only 4 are the real size; and all green of course. I had a total of 5 baby zucchini, and just found some frozen in my deep freeze from last summer. I had lots of greens-kale and beets, and green beens and peas. My carrots and beets are also babies, and mostly still in the ground. And a prolific year for lettuce. And slugs.

Here's one of my pests. Is there a purpose for the slug? They may very well be my least favorite of the bugs. Despite all the advice for crushed egg shells, pepper, and I don't know what else, we just had fun sprinkling them with salt. (Sorry to you slug lovers).

It was not the most abundant year for our garden. My usual technique of compost, seed, weed and ignore wasn't enough of a match for our short and wet summer. I'm scared to consider if I spent more money planting my garden than the produce I got off of it. And I'm considering if we should dig up some more lawn to convert into a garden for next summer. Or wait and see what next summer brings?

Fortunately, I like watching the garden grow over the summer, and having Scarlett see where food comes from. If that is the main benefit to gardening this year, I will have to say it was still a gardening success.