Our Garden

Here's Mr. M in front of what was supposed to be a cool morning-glory-and-sunflower house. Unfortunately, I miscalculated a few things, namely how big the house needs to be so that I 3-yo can fit inside it comfortably. It was a tad too small. Plus morning glories are really vigorous growers that completely took over the entire house and collapsed what was supposed to be a roof. And most sunflowers got eaten by bugs while in infancy. But I'm not giving up on this project. I'm thinking that next year I might try a larger house or a teepee or a tunnel.

This is just one of our eggplant plants. Last year we grew a few, but only saw 3-4 eggplants from them (total). This year is very different. Each plant has about a dozen baby eggplants. Did I mention that eggplant is one of my most favorite veggies? I simply can't get enough of it :)

This is something that just grew there, next to the tomato trellis. I have no idea how it got there - we certainly didn't plant it on purpose. We didn't think the little plant, which we thought was a watermelon, had any chance of even surviving in the dense shade of our 8-ft tall tomatoes. Next thing we knew, the blasted plant overtook half the garden and much of the driveway.
Now, this is a view of our garden a few weeks ago - giant corn, sweet peppers and eggplant out front and the tomato/bean trellis to the right.

And this is some of the bounty we've been picking. First we got absolutely swamped with the yellow squash. At some point the entire veggie drawer in our fridge was full of these things. Fortunately, they cook down considerably. So I sauteed most of them with onions and it turned out great. Next - tomatoes. These are the early smaller ones. More are ripening now.

Then - first eggplants and lots and lots of cukes. Seriously, we have like 50 of them now in the fridge waiting to be turned into pickles. Also, check out the green peppers. Again, this is the first year we're actually having more than one pepper between all our plants. Pretty exciting. Ignore the carrots, they are mostly for show 'cause they aren't very tasty at all.

The tiny white-ish "berries" mounded over the carrots are some of our very abundant ground cherries. We only have one plant this year and it's proven to be the most awesome vegge ever - requires practically no care, grows very well and forms nice ground cover, and bears lots and lots and lots of sweet little fruits. Too bad I dn't like the taste of them (but Chris and M do and they've been snacking on ground cherries all along). We also have lots of basil, lovage and mint.