Rain. Bucket loads of it during June and July brought life to the dry desert dirt.
And to our garden.
While weeds and vegetable (and fruit) plants grew we could never really be sure there would be much of a harvest. The average frost dates for our little valley are June 15th and September 15th. Three months, 90 days, is not much of a growing season for vegetables.
We worked at it anyway, trying to keep the weeds at bay.
I was in charge of the potato plants.
The kids were in charge of the squash and pumpkins.
Why is it that weeds grow so much faster than garden plants?
Sometime around August we started to get our first strawberries. We haven’t ever grown strawberries before so whoever found the sweet red drops were richly rewarded.
Now its mid-October and we STILL haven’t had a hard frost. There have been strawberries galore. Our tomato plants are bent over from the weight of plump fruit that has actually turned red.
We have potatoes! Piles of yellow Yukon gold
and deep purple potatoes. When made into mashed potatoes it looks like we are eating play-dough!
Our watermelons actually grew and matured to delicious sweetness. Not quite as sweet as baby Henry but three times as heavy!
All the pie pumpkins are hiding at the bottom.
We even got pumpkins, acorn and banana squash. Seriously, folks, this is the first year of the ten we have been up here and trying that we’ve gotten such a great harvest. I haven’t shown the typical carrots, radishes, lettuce, spinach, and green beans. Those are cooler weather crops and grow really well even in our short season.
I am just amazed we are still eating produce picked straight from the garden in October! We are enjoying all we can of the colorful, richly hued harvest we have had this year.
I love your blog. I am so glad I found you on Facebook.
Oh, thank you, Joy!
I’m so glad you had garden success! I’m trying to be really positive about the fact that I grew really amazing green onions. Not much else, but hey, green onions! All my poor fruit trees either died or look horrible- it was very sad. We have the opposite problem- too much sun! We have about 360 days of sunshine here and it’s SO HOT all summer. I need to try winter gardening and see how that goes. Those purple potatoes look delish!
I think it’s so weird that some years everything grows great while other years only one or two things do well. Last year we couldn’t even get zucchini to grow. Zucchini! That stuff grows everywhere but not last year.
Oh, and by the way, just wanted to say thank you for your blog. It’s always a positive place to visit. I’ve not kept up with blogs and commenting on blogs much for a year or so, and I gave up finding time to do my own blog, but I enjoy reading what others put out there. I’m glad you still find and take the time to do this!
Thanks for your kind words, Holly!
AuntSue
CONGRATULATIONS! Your hard work has paid off this year. What a yummy year!. Maybe you can have cold frames or some kind of green house for the strawberries and other crops to extend the growing season. What great gardeners you are.
I love your blog. Your family is an inspiration to me.
I’ve been wanting to try cold frames for the past few years. I just need to bite the bullet and do it!
We had a bummer crop of kale and bok choy. It is possible to have too many greens!
That’s so fun, we’ve moved this year so we’ll be figuring out a whole new climate for our garden!