Gardening Update for August 2021

This year we planted 5 different type’s of tomatoes, green bell peppers, sweet potatoes, peas, zucchini, cucumbers, red beets, strawberries, raspberries and lettuce. We also have 3 grapevines and an apple tree. Every year we plant a little bit more than the year before.

Thanks to all of the rain our area has had this past season some of our garden plants went nuts! Every 2-3 days I’m harvesting a huge basketful of tomatoes, at least 15 cucumbers a week and the zucchinis think they own the garden! It has been a really good growing season so far.

With the tomatoes I like to cook them down and make our own homemade tomato sauce and spaghetti sauce. I will sometimes use tomatoes in my zucchini salsa recipe that I whip up. Tomatoes are USED big time here! The cucumbers are mainly used for my sweet pickles and chunky sweet relishes that I make. We do use the tomatoes & cucumbers in our salads throughout the summer too.

Zucchini is made into zucchini salas and zucchini pickles. I will shred some of it and freeze it for later when I need some to make homemade zucchini bread and/or muffins. Oh yeah, have you ever tried zucchini relish? That’s delicious too. Roasted zucchini slices with parmesan cheese on top? Yes please!

One thing that did “just okay” this year was our strawberries. The first round we planted gotten eaten and dug up by groundhogs. Ugh. So, we had to plant again and then fence in the strawberry patch to keep the critters out. Hopefully next year we’ll have better luck with them.

How is your garden doing this year? What are you growing? What have you had problems with? I would love to hear about it.