Garden Update 3.0

I hope you enjoyed my super late photos and comments about our "new" garden. If not, then you probably won't want to read this post either ;). But if you did like reading that one, then you'll probably be entertained by this one too!

This is what the garden currently looks like. I took all of these photos last Thursday so they're pretty current.

The large tomato plants have pretty much taken over everything. We now have tomatoes growing in the cucumber/strawberry planter box, but that's okay, I never like cucumbers anyway. Plus, the majority of the cucumbers growing now are yellow and orange, so we've been tossing them away. We do have a few green cucumbers though. But perhaps cucumber season is over? Or maybe they're not getting enough nutrients?

The strawberry plants are dried up as well. We haven't gotten a strawberry in weeks, but I noticed a few new buds...so maybe they're getting their second wind? Leti and Lauren didn't care for the tartness of the strawberries, so they left the berries untouched. I picked, washed, and then froze them for our smoothies. It worked out well.

The zucchini and crook neck squash are done, I think. We get one or two squash every other week or so, but for the most part we end up buying our zucchini produce now. They were very abundant about two months ago though.

Like I said, the tomatoes are taking over. Because we never tied them up and were late at adding cages, they're growing everywhere. Luckily though, we all eat tomatoes and there are so many ways to use them. Lauren made marinara sauce several times, and we add them to pizzas, and salads.

The basil is also sadly done. It probably would've lasted longer had we taken better care of the plant. At first we were diligent and "pruned" the basil, but after awhile we became lazy and let flowers take over, so no more basil. Last week however, Lauren managed to pick enough basil leaves for a delicious salad dressing. Sidenote: I used this oil based basil dressing for my garbanzo bean and (homegrown) tomato salad; awesome!

Our baby orange sweet tomatoes are still my favorite plant; I've coined it my "work of art". When I first planted it in a container way back in March, I did a lot of research about taking care of tomato plants, and I've done pretty well following the "rules". I do a pretty good job at picking off all the yellow branches (it's normal for them to turn yellow) and I monitor the produce every few days. I read that a good tomato plant should get tall and skinny when you pick the suckers off, and that's what this baby tomato plant has come to resemble!

Even though we didn't take full advantage of our garden this season, I've enjoyed having it. I don't know if I'll be sharing any other updates on our summer garden (because I think the season is basically over for us), but I learned a lot about gardening and I hope to someday be able to have a huge garden! In which case, this first season of gardening ever will definitely be a starting block to leap off of.