Summer Garden Update

As summer comes to an end, I want to post an update on our garden. Overall, I am thrilled with this year's crops! I feel like last summer was a total bust, so I'm glad we had better success this year. 

Watermelon

I'll start with our biggest success: watermelon. This is only our second year growing melons, and last year, we yielded two watermelons. This year we have already picked 4 melons and hope to have two more! Strangely enough, I'm not sick of watermelon. My kids have thoroughly enjoyed eating slice after slice, but I've also made watermelon sorbet (delicious) and a watermelon juice drink with mint and jalapeno (equally delicious). I can say with assurance we will be trying our hand at watermelons again next year. 

Tomatoes

I wasn't sure how my tomatoes would do out of the gate. My little seedlings were slow to start, but they really finished strong. I've made Roasted Tomato-Chipotle Salsa a couple times, and I hope to make my first batch of pizza sauce soon. Stay tuned! 

Peppers

Our pepper plants have almost been a complete bust. We have two jalapeno plants that managed to survive, but our bell pepper plants totally flopped.  I've never had issue with growing peppers before, so I was a bit surprised. I don't think my seedlings were strong enough when I planted them outside. I plan on making some jalapeno poppers sometime this week with the few hot peppers that managed to survive. 

Pumpkins

This is the third or fourth year in a row we've tried growing squash of any kind, and again, it's been a failure. This year, we grew pumpkins. The plants started out strong and then all-of-a-sudden started dying on us. We had a few gourds growing, but they've since shriveled up and died. So sad; my son is a bit devastated. I'm sure some type of bug got to the plant, and I don't think we have the best soil to grow squash. 

More to Come...

We haven't harvested our sweet potatoes yet; we'll probably do that in the next couple weeks. 

We also had really good success with green beans this year! Next week, I'll show you how freeze green beans to enjoy throughout the year. Stay tuned!

Have you ever had success in growing pumpkins? 

Any secrets you'd like to share? 

Share this post