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harvesting the veggie garden

As much as I enjoy planting and tending my garden... the best part is harvesting the produce. I think it is very satisfying to eat the food that you have grown yourself. I loved coming home for work, going to the backyard to see what was ready to pick for the dinner table. I have posted the veggies in the order they were picked.

The first thing in my garden that was ready to eat were the peas. Peas are quite sweet when you first pick them. As soon as you pick them the sugars start to break down, so there is nothing like fresh peas. I liked to eat them fresh on a salad or slightly steamed on top of a buttery pasta.

The lettuce was ready soon after the peas and grew all summer. It was great for a quick salad and provided meals for Torty B. Tortoise all summer.

I only got a few handfuls of beans and I am ashamed to say I never ate them. They sat on the counter and went rubbery. Ah well. Torty liked em.

I had a great crop of radishes. They were best raw.. dipped in a little ranch dressing. They also were good in the salads.

The cucumbers grew like crazy! We had fresh cuke slice on our salads and still plenty for sweet and dill pickles. A definate success.

The one thing Aaron really wanted to grow was watermelon. We picked a small variety so it wouldn't take over the whole garden. Sugar Babies is what we planted and there were about four or five melons on the vine. One sprouted from a vine that grew across my pea stands, so an anxious Aaron built a little table for the melon to rest on as he grew. The melons were a cute little travel size, barely eight inches across. They were sweet and tasty.

I actually don't like green peppers, but I do like red peppers, so I thought I would grow them and leave them on the vine til they turned red. They never got very big though and they started to go bad before the turned red. I don't think I will grow them next year.

The carrots did great. I planted a stubby variety called Thumbelinas. They too were tasty on salads through the summer and when I made my big harvest we baked a big loaf of carrot bread from them.

My regular sized tomatoes did ok. I planted three varieties and one of them definately did better than the other two, so I will be sure to only plant that kind next year. The plum tomatoes and cherry tomatoes did well but the grape tomateoes were out of control! Cluster after cluster of grape tomatoes ripened on the the vine all season. I didn't know what to do with them all.

I also got green onions as you can see here. There was also a steady surplus of basil, which I didn't take any pictures of either.

I almost always had enough veggies for a nice salad.

As you can see here.