Winter gardening

 Yesterday's record October snow coincided with my plans for carrots in our soup for supper, so out I went with my boots and my shovel...

...to dig up some carrots! Thankfully I know roughly where they were planted, and the ground is not frozen under the snow. Still, it was a new experience to thrust that shovel through six inches of snow and come up with this:

A ton of food

 Today marks the day that we surpassed 2000 pounds of food that we've pulled out of the yard! The girls and I processed just over 80 pounds of pears today, and that (plus a bit of kale and about a pound of green beans) was enough to push us over that magic line.

Now we can say quite literally that we've grown a ton of food this year. ;) That's pretty cool. 

Reuben made himself comfortable near the compost pile where we're throwing all of the not-so-good pears.

Rinnah's climbing the ladder to pick the beans off the 12 foot tall sunflowers! Thankfully they're bending down as the season progresses.

Three kiddos tossing pears into the pile.

One of the perks of having a big brother is his big muscles! He's got three little sisters in there!

Picking, picking, picking pears.

Pumpkins and potatoes/half a ton

 For our friends at church...all the potatoes in apple bags are coming along this morning. Later in the afternoon, I managed to drop off some more from the mesh bags with two more families. So neat to be able to share!!

Check out these beauties! I've photographed from the front/south side of these guys, but from the back/north, you can see five gorgeous pumpkins nearly ready for harvest! They're so funny to see hanging there mid-air!!

I'm wondering now if we'll be able to say, literally, that we brought in a ton of food from our yard this year. As of yesterday, we surpassed half a ton, and we've got the heaviest stuff yet to come (pumpkins, squash, pears, and still a good chunk of potatoes and tomatoes as well.)

What are you doing, Dad?

"What are you doing, Dad?" ask the little biker girls.

"I'm measuring the sunflowers, girls," says the Dad with the big floppy hat.

"It's THIIIIIIIS big!"

We couldn't quite get the tape measure to stand up tall enough, but were able to determine that this one is between 12 and 13 feet tall!!! That's a big sunflower!

And since height is apparently one of the themes in the vegetable garden this year, here's a picture from the day before of Matt harvesting cucumbers.

Still growing, growing...

 Two months ago the sunflowers were twice as tall as the little girls; now they're twice as tall (or more) than Matt!

It's gorgeous, too...

So incredible to see all the different stages of growth all at once on that head!!! (I had to climb to the very top of our step ladder and hold the camera above my head to get this photo!)

And, just in case we didn't have enough potatoes, I cut up and planted two that were going bad from the store midway through the summer, and sure enough, we've got one more row of taters to dig in a few weeks. The wonders of a garden never cease to delight me!

Compost: it's what's [not] for dinner

 Thankfully! Although I do enjoy teasing the kids sometimes as they walk into the kitchen asking what's for supper, and I motion to the bucket in the sink exclaiming, "Soup!!"

In all reality, though, I find great pleasure in the buckets and buckets full of "gray" water and other organic waste that we can throw out into the yard. I don't always keep the water in the winter, but it's breath-taking to me how much perfectly good water gets put down the drains in our society!!! NONE of that needs to be put through a sewage treatment plant, but that's where it would go if we didn't intercept it on its way down.

Naked Ladies!

The "naked ladies" are starting to come up! Reliably some of the first foliage up in the spring, after dying down to nothing, August is when they pop up their heads to bloom!

Corn!

Matt insisted that we try corn again, after trying years ago with really no luck.

It's working this year! We're rookies, so harvested the first ones a bit late and they were rather starchy, but went out the second day and did a more rigorous harvest so the others that were ready or past ready didn't go too far, and check it out! Thirty-some ears of corn!!!

That's a funny looking one! The girls think it looks like a kangaroo.

Well, that's explains it!

In case we ever wonder why there don't seem to be as many tomatoes coming into the house as it seems there should be...

...it just might be a matter of the crew!

Uncle!

We don't stand a chance against this monster of a pumpkin!!!

For that matter, neither do the tomatoes, the corn, or the rhubarb!

Cottonwood Garden

The garden by the cottonwood usually has it's peak when the white lilies and the globe thistles are blooming, so this year it was an enjoyable surprise to come out weeks after the lilies were done and find this:

The balloon flowers are finally established enough that they put on a decent show, the globe thistles are still blooming, and I've got two different kinds of garden phlox blooming in a medium pink and a bright fuschia that balance out the composition. Gardens are always full of surprises.

Growing, growing, growing

The giant sunflowers are living up to their name! They're twice as tall as the little girls!

The late tomatoes are starting to take off - not nearly as big as the ones we planted earlier in the season, but we'll get tomatoes from them, I'm guessing, before the summer's over! This is the little rock-pile wall that Owen built for us at the edge where the rhubarb grows. We had to co-opt the space to the west of it for the tomatoes because the regular garden is out of room!

The vertical pumpkin growing is a great idea, but would work better if we only had one plant on each trellis! Our winter squash are doing fine, but these pumpkins are taking over. I'm beginning to hope they reach far enough back to climb up the pine tree!

This is looking to the east from the other side of the co-opted tomato space. You can see the corn through the trellis, and on the far left of the photo, the south side of the vertical pumpkins.

One of our zucchini patches. Four clusters here and three in the other location. Curious to see how many pounds of food these babies put out this year!

And this is a view into one of our fenced-in areas. Beets in the front, and some bush beans that got planted late. Middle is lettuce, zinnias (just to be pretty!) and carrots, and in the back, just visible, a hydrangea, more beets, and a cabbage.

Zinnias are such boisterously exuberant flowers!

 

The largest cluster of Roma tomatoes. Lots of fruit; none ripe yet.

Yummy!

Can you believe all of this comes out of our yard? What bounty!

(Raspberries, blueberries, chocolate mint, pie cherries)

And from a few days earlier...

July 1st veggie panorama

The veggie garden

 This really is the best vegetable garden we've ever had.

Gloria walking past the corn with a handful of daylilies we're potting up. Pumpkins are climbing vertically on the left.

Evania demonstrating how tall the corn is getting!

The pumpkins - already halfway up their trellis!

The basil is taking off

We're going to be sharing lots of potatoes at this rate!

We have sunflowers growing up in the center of each of our pole bean cages. The sunflowers are doing better than the beans so far!