My Pumpkins
I harvested pumpkins today, and each one is now wondering what will become of them. Will they be carved into a spooky or silly jack-o-lantern to decorate the front porch on Friday night? Will they be part of our fall decorations and help us to remember to be thankful for our bountiful garden on Thanksgiving?
Growing your own it so rewarding. Granted, we did not get many pumpkins this year, and I probably could have purchased them for for less than the amount of water it took to grow them. I love playing in the dirt, and waiting to see what I will be rewarded with. It brings back childhood memories or mud pies?
For the most part, we had a VERY successful garden this year; it is still producing from our summer crops, and my fall crops are doing nicely. This year we grew 4 varieties of tomatoes, 9 varieties of peppers, yellow and green zucchini, pumpkins, corn, peas, sunflowers, artichokes, beans, hops (used to make a home brewed jalapeño ale), scallions, carrots, radishes, and lots of different varieties of leafy greens for salad and cooking. On the average we were harvesting between 10 and 20 lbs of vegetables a day. Besides the veggies I have an extensive herb garden too. We ate, gave away, dried, froze, made jellies and sauces, and we still have an abundance. The only things we did not use were the artichokes (I let them go to flower when the aphids attacked), and the corn — I was gone when it should have been harvested, so it got starchy. We let it dry on the stocks, and now our hamsters are thoroughly enjoying eating it off the cob!
