Our 2013 Garden

So, I'm playing some catch-up.  It appears that I haven't blogged in far too long, and there were some projects last year that I'm quite proud of and wanted to share and archive, so the next few posts will be catch-up posts. :)

Last year's garden experience was a success.  We ended up sharing quite a bit of our bounty to neighbors and co-workers.  And we've learned quite a bit, and have waged war on various bugs in the process.

Here are some pictures from last summer's garden.

We had a rat problem during the summer that ate our tomatoes, and our edamame.  Also, I think we over crowded our tomatoes too much, so they didn't really produce.  Otherwise, we count this last year as a success.  We did quite a bit of preserving, from blanching and freezing what we could (green beans, beets, carrots, spinach, broccoli), making zucchini lasagnas, zucchini turkey burgers, zucchini muffins and freezing all of those.  Making dried zucchini chips by dehydrating zucchini slices. Making zucchini kim chi. Pickling and canning jalapenos, freezing jalapeno halves.  Making jalapeno jelly.

For thanksgiving, we got to use our frozen green beans for green bean casserole, and fresh carrots from the garden.  We also used kale leaves for dressing up the plate that the turkey was going on.  It was wonderful to be able to use items from the garden for thanksgiving.

We only hope that this coming garden season will also be a success.