Garden Bounty

While we have not had an abundant supply of vegetables from our garden, we have had good results. My only experiences with canning and/or freezing came from growing up on our farm, where it was my Mother's responsibility to feed our family of 6. Needless to say, her gardens (yes, that is PLURAL!) were large and produced so much food that most years we had enough to last through the winter if we properly froze or canned the produce.

My gardens are small and while they are producing great for their size, I was disappointed when I only froze 7 meals worth of green beans last night. Now, granted I did put a lot of beans in each freezer bag, and it is more than we would usually eat at a meal, but it seemed so silly to only put a little in each quart size freezer bag. So I filled each bag half full. We will just eat a lot of beans on the evenings we incorporate these packages into our meals!

We will still have plenty of fresh beans for the next two weeks (I am guessing that they will continue to produce a few more weeks) so if I wanted to get more frozen, I probably could.

I have already decided that I will make some changes to my garden next year... 2-4 more rows of beans, I would like to add carrots, 2-4 more tomato plants (and heavier duty tomato cages... 2X4 posts are having a hard time holding up the tomato plants....) about the same number of peppers, less eggplants (what can I do with 50 eggplant fruits?), fewer herbs and fewer lettuce. I need more room for my one zucchini plant as it has overtaken 4 rows of lettuce and almost ready to over take the peas!

I would like to build more raised garden beds, but William has vetoed my request. I will just have to use the space more wisely next year. I know that I can at least double the output of this year using the same size of garden, with multiple plantings! I am so exicted for next year already and I haven't even had a ripe tomato yet THIS year!!!