Summer - Gardening

This summer's garden started in the spring with my two favourite boys starting seedlings:

See that adorable kid proudly holding his shovel? Yes, well, I mistakenly used that shovel while doing some weeding. Needless to say, this was the last time he used his shovel. Mommy still needs to replace it. I was also asked, moments after the shovel breaking incident, if I could please be careful to not break his bulldozer and backhoe. I was properly ashamed.

The seedlings grew on our kitchen table:

and grew:

 

until it was warm enough to plant them outside. At that point, we needed to bring in some soil for the garden, and there was an ambitious lad who wanted to help:

Once those seedlings were in the ground, they grew quite quickly, with the help of our little rainbow maker:

He took his job very seriously:

The plants looked quite small when we went on vacation in July, but when we came home, they had grown so much that we quickly realized we had placed our rows too close together!  What you are seeing here is (believe it or not) green beans, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, big tomatoes (no idea what kind) and Green peppers:

 

Alack and alas, everything seems to be none the worse for the wear, however, lesson learned for next year.

We recently went into Operation "Save the Tomatoes" and spent an evening staking them as best we could. Last summer was so miserable for tomatoes that I don't think we even planted any. This year was perfect and we foolishly didn't stake them or cage them in advance. Foolish gardeners! We've got so many tomatoes that I can hardly wait for them to ripen. I've got plans for ketchup and sauces and salads and..

Speaking of salad, we enjoyed many salads out of our garden, but during our last weekend away, the lettuce, well, it was neither pretty nor edible. Mr. Happy dug it up and composted it. We'll plant more when the weather cools a little.

Mr. Happy has plans for gardening into the fall using this cold frame that he built. I can't wait to see what we can produce despite the colder temperatures.

In the meantime, please feast your eyes on my "big" harvest of green beans:

It might not look like a whole awful lot, but it's about 4 cups of blanched and chilled beans ready for the freezer.  I am ridiculously excited about this! Next year - more beans! And perhaps a deep freeze!