Garden 2010

Here is my garden report for 2010. I will try to keep my comments brief so it doesn't turn into a novel like last year! The spring brought us strawberries, which became over run with bindweed and dug in by voles!! Frustrating. We'll see how they fare next year. We also had spinach, radishes, anaheim peppers and peas. Tammy and Emmie helped harvest some peas for me. This first picking were the sweetest peas I have ever had. Yummmy! Then the later pickings became quite starchy and I threw them away.

Beets. We enjoyed Pink Pancakes. I froze some of the beet puree to use on Valentines Day.

We loved the red onions that we grew---definitely want to do those again. We also had yellow onions. We tried tomatillos for the first time. I made a couple batches of tomatillo ranch dressing and they were added to my bottled chili verde (green salsa) that I tried this year.
Watermelon---yippee! We successfully grew six. Sadly, our darn cute, but over ambitious little neighbor boy (he's only 4 years old) ended up picking the last three perfectly ripe ones and carting them off! He returned one melon the next day. Blasted little melon thief! Smile. Good thing he really is a cute kid. Green beans brought along Fresh Green Bean Soup. I always look forward to making it. It was great to have a harvest of yellow, russet, and red potatoes this year. Add those to zuchinni, yellow squash, bell peppers, tomatoes and onions and you can make this yummy skillet dish. . .
I also made a few of my favorite tomato-basil pies with our plethera of tomatoes.
These beautiful pear tomatoes I frequently cooked up with a scrambled egg in the morning. I made Green Tomato Jam (I put in extra pectin this year and made it too thick---darn.) I also made bottled red salsa using Mrs. Wages. We loved it! I still love her dill pickle mix, too. We had pickling cucumbers this year, also---but I only ate them fresh. Hopefully next year I can bottle some pickles again. We grew jalapenos (made more Smoked Gouda Poppers). And I had cilantro, thyme, parsley and dill. We had two carrots to our name because we didn't water the seedlings enough. And our cantaloupe never fully ripened.

I love learning new things each year. This year I realized I can also harvest the dried beans from off the plant. I always just threw the old pods away or left them on the plant. Thanks Good Things Utah for clue-ing me into that one. Lastly we had a wonderful crop of peaches that I bottled, froze in pies or made into fruit leather and frozen yogurt. My mom came over for a day and helped with that effort---thanks Mom!