We've been living in our home for the past 8 years or so and have always been weary of the mounds of dirt on the west side of our property. We decided to finally do something about it. We hired a landscaper, showed him photos of what we like and he got busy.
We wanted all the look to look natural and rustic. Garden steps would be giant flat boulders, the planters we wanted giant moss rock.
Here's Brooke inspecting the materials for our coyote fence.
The garden was finished after planting season so I got busy as fast I could. Bob's parents were in town which I was grateful for ...... they helped with the planting of the herbs, berries and tomato plants.
Brooke's house took a couple of weekends to build. Bob assembled it and put shingles on the roof in the hot summer sun. The house turned out to be more difficult than advertised. The girls took an entire weekend painting the outside and inside and decorating. Brooke loves her new house!
This is just a sampling of the tomatoes picked each weekend. We would process the tomatoes into juice immediately to freeze or I would spend all day making delicious tomato sauce to freeze.
The girls had fun with the tomato press .... for a few weeks at least. There were so many tomatoes the novelty soon wore off.
I found the best tomato sauce recipe! It took the entire day however it was pretty amazing. The chunky vegetables and fresh tomatoes made for a fresh, flavorful sauce.
We had zucchini and squash growing so fast .... anyone and everyone who crossed my path went home with an armload. My mother-in-law gave me an ingenious recipe for a zucchini dessert. The zucchini crumble tasted was delicious. I served the dessert to company and no one believed the apple crumble a la mode they thought they were eating was in fact zucchini.
A weekend of picking.
This is the first garden we ever had. We didn't know when to pick the watermelon. We waited a little too long however it was so good we called friends and family to come over and taste our super sweet watermelon. It was the best!
Potatoes are ready to harvest. Kendall enjoyed digging up armfuls of potatoes with every plant.
Her bag was quickly filling up.
Kendall with a bag full of green chile and bell peppers. Working the garden every weekend was a lot of work. Processing everything consumed our weekends. Having a freezer full of organic garden vegetables can't be beat.
Brooke thought the okra was funny looking.
One of my favorite part of the garden is the gate I designed. Rustic and masculine it opens to huge boulder steps leading to the garden.
It was unreal how quickly the season ended. We were having so much fun with our garden we didn't want it to end. When first frost was forecasted we covered most of the garden with tarp to save the remaining vegetables. We picked most of the remaining tomatoes and brought them inside to ripen.
Our pumpkins were so fun to grow. Next year we are going to try to grow them even larger. The plants quickly took over pathways, grew up over walls and steps. Their leaves were as big as I ever saw.
The girls loved the strawberries the most. Even the littlest strawberries were packed with flavor. The first thing Brooke would do when she ran out to the garden was to look for ripe strawberries and eat them before anyone else could get one.
I grew so many different herbs and didn't know how to process them. I cut basil, parsley, oregano, cilantro and more for my brother, a chef and cooked with them as much as possible however much of it did go to waste. There was so much to do I didn't do much with the herbs.
We have apple, pear, peach and cherry trees. Thank goodness they won't grow fruit for a while ... the vegetables were all consuming. We did get a few apples and ate those as soon as they were ripe however as exciting as it is to grow a treeful of fruit I know it's going to increase our workload and we may even need to purchase a new freezer!
