Our Cup of Coffey: { Garden }

If I were to pick one word to describe our garden this year, it would be: TOMATOES. And you'll soon find out why.

This year we planted late March/early April. Our "left over" veggies from last year (the ones that survived the winter) were our onions and green onions. So we didn't plant any more of those. New things that we tried this year were: broccoli, spinach, red and green bell peppers, and pumpkins. The things we didn't try again that we'd tried last year were corn and jalapeno peppers.

Look at our lovely little veggie babies!

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Our tomatoes[/caption]

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Our two carrot rows with a pepper plant on either side - one green peppers, the other red![/caption]

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Our onions, green onions, broccoli, cucumbers, green beans, and spinach.[/caption]

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Our pumpkin plants![/caption]

And here's a picture about 3 weeks after planting.

We started most everything from seed, but our tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli started out as little plants. All of which took off after we planted! The above pictures were taken maybe a week after planting and the broccoli plants are already almost a foot tall!

At the start of the season, both McKay and I got really sick with a nasty string of the flu. It was awful. McKay got sick first and then the next week I was sick. So for a good 2 weeks or so our little sprouts didn't get the TLC they needed, which really affected some of them. It took a lot of work to get them back, but the green beans and cucumbers were especially stunted because of our 2 week hiatus. By mid summer the green beans were happy and healthy, but those cucumbers really struggled all season. Last year we were picking probably 8-10 cucumbers a week, and this year we only got about 8 total from the plant. Bummer.

But whatever we did with the tomato plants must have been right because MAN, they went wild this year. We got loads of tomatoes! We even picked all the green tomatoes about a week ago and they've been turning red by the day. It looks like we'll have tomatoes all winter long!

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A harvest from early summer[/caption]

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A mid-summer harvest. Look at all those tomatoes!![/caption]

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A harvest from late summer[/caption]

The tomato cages ended up being too small for how large the plants got, we took rope and tied the plants upright--or else they would have been lying on the ground because they were too big (taller than me!) Maybe just one plant next year would be a good idea haha.

Starting mid-august we were picking tomatoes like crazy, we've picked probably about 20 tomatoes a week! And if you haven't seen my pleas to come and take some tomatoes, you must be a social media hermit. And also if you've wanted some and haven't come and taken any, BOO. Because we've had to throw some out because we couldn't eat them in time!

McKay was most excited about our pumpkin plant, which turned out to be a huge success! We'd gotten about 8 pumpkins when we took this picture, and got 12 pumpkins total.

You can see part of a tomato plant in the background of this picture, yeah, HUGE. And that's not even the biggest it got.

We were really excited to decorate with the pumpkins and carve them! We knew we probably wouldn't make any pumpkin flavored things out of them though, because neither of us like the taste of pumpkin all that much. Although a friend of ours made some pumpkin scones this year that I thought were DELISH! We ended up having a fun little carving party with some friends.

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