Year-End Recap

As the new year approaches, I wanted to take a moment to recap the last few months since my last post.  Remember the pumpkins we took time to plant in July? Well, many of the plants grew beautiful green leaves but no pumpkins grew and within a week of the plants looking so lush, all of the leaves seemed to disintegrate and almost disappear.  I didn't take the time to try and figure out why this happened, but it may have been too much watering on my part.  I don't really know, but it was really weird. So...we did what the majority of people do...went to Wal-Mart and purchased 3 pumpkins for carving at Halloween time!

 
Another plus to growing your own corn and doing a garden project with your father is the fun fall decorations that appeared at the entrance of my driveway!  Thanks, Dad!

 

By the time we got around to planting the middle area of our garden (sweet potatoes, beans and 2nd round of watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew and okra) it was towards the middle of the summer and REALLY HOT.  Dad was busy helping care for a cousin struggling with cancer and I had both kids at home and we were trying to keep cool however possible, so we didn't take the time put straw around this area as we should have.  The grass and weeds got ahead of us in this area so it was really hard to tell where the weeds ended and the plants started.  We almost forgot we had even planted sweet potatoes.  We should have dug them up earlier but we were able to salvage a few...

 

We were able to sell &/or share hundreds of tomatoes this summer...The tomato plants were SO plentiful!  I had read to go ahead and pick all of the firm green tomatoes still on the vines before the first frost, so I spent over an hour picking all of the little tomatoes still left on our vines one day.  I couldn't believe how many were still left!

 

So with all of these green tomatoes in my possession...I went to the internet for ideas on how to use them.  I made a green tomato & apple crisp which turned out really good.  Those I made the dessert for weren't very appreciative of the fact I tried to "hide" that there were green tomatoes in it, but said the dessert tasted really good.  I made a green tomato salsa which turned out WAY TOO VINEGARY and the few people I gave it to didn't really care for it. (Lesson Learned:  Don't always rely on internet recipes to be delicious)  I also made a green tomato chutney...which I guess is popular in the south and is a type of relish or topping used for extra flavor.  I can't tell you if anyone liked it as I was too nervous to give it to anyone after the salsa experiment.  I tasted it and it seemed good but I couldn't figure out what I'd like to eat with it.  I still have 5 bowls of it in my refrigerator and probably 5 bowls of the green tomato salsa in my freezer if anyone wants to give it a try! LOL...Here's what the chutney looked like...

Some of the green tomatoes were sliced and frozen for Fried Green Tomatoes...Anyone who knows me very well, knows my eyes are drawn to the color green...Which is why I had to take a picture of this...I thought it was so pretty :-)



 

Grandma George taught me the coolest trick I learned to do with green tomatoes.  She remembers as a little girl that her mom would wrap their green tomatoes in newspaper and put them in a cardboard box.  Christmas time would roll around and they would have ripe red tomatoes to eat in the middle of winter!  I gave Grandma quite a few green tomatoes for her to try this again.  Sure enough--the tomatoes ripened!  They ripened way before Christmas and they all seemed to ripen at the same time but there for a short time they had ripe tomatoes after ripe tomato season had ended!  I will definitely try this myself next year.

 

One mid-November day, dad came over and pulled up our tomato plants and took down the tomato stakes, then he came back in a day or so and we tried to burn off the majority of dead plants that were left.  The ground wasn't as dry as we thought so it proved more difficult than we hoped it would be. (Note: There were no corn stalks to burn because we had pulled those up a while back and fed them to dad's cattle.)

 



After we burned off whatever would burn, dad hopped back on the tractor and tilled up the ground.  Not a trace of our blood, sweat and tears remained...Just rich brown dirt and MORE ROCKS!  We sowed winter wheat in the ground for the time being so we can till that into the soil when spring rolls around.  Here's what the ground looks like now.  A new clean slate.

Unless they've participated in this journey with us either by working in the garden or following this blog, no one could realize how much time and attention this patch of earth had received in the past 12 months.  My family and I have learned a lot about gardening this year.  We've tried a lot of new recipes and my husband and kids have gained a new liking for some (but still not all) fruits and veggies they may not have even wanted to try if they hadn't seen it growing in our garden.  Also, I wouldn't trade the large amount of time I got to spend with my dad during this project for the world.  Thank you, dad, for all the time and effort you put forth on our garden.  It means so much to me and I am happy we got to share this experience together.  As Mimi would say, "I Love You Bunches!"