Saturday in the garden - 50+ pounds of pumpkins, green peppers, more zucchini, tomatoes

The highlight in the garden this week was I finally picked the pumpkins! I have a very big “patch” of vines, but only had two substantial pumpkins growing. They had turned orange and seemed big enough. Turns out they were about 20 and 30 pounds each! I harvested 50 pounds of pumpkins – I can’t believe it! I had to use a wheelbarrow to haul them around to the front of the house and proudly display them on my front porch.  p.s. The shirt my daughter is wearing is from Crazy 8, my Mother in Law found it last year – I didn’t have it personally embroidered, that would be a little weird. But if the shirt fits, wear it, I guess! 🙂 

I don’t know if I’ll have the strength to cut into these beauties.

Check out this italian goodness I harvested this week. Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes, more basil, a zucchini and a couple green peppers!

I ended up throwing it all into a pot with some sauteed leeks (from the garden), garlic (from the neighbor’s garden!), oregano, mushrooms and a splash of red wine for a rustic tomato sauce! We stuffed it into some manicotti shells along with some ricotta and mozzarella – and baked, it was delicious!

The tomatoes are coming around!!! Yay! I haven’t watered in more than a week and it’s been pretty warm around here. My hope was the tomatoes would think they were headed down a dead end road and hurry up and ripen. Seems to have worked!

Check out these green peppers! I think I picked them a little early, but I was getting impatient and we needed them for chicken fajitas tonight!

Chopped up and ready for fajitas!

I also picked a few more green beans and zucchini (not pictured) – they just keep coming! This next week should be ALL tomatoes. A lot of tomatoes. I’m wondering what I should do with all of them? I have never canned before. I just recently heard of someone who quarters her tomatoes and freezes them on a cookie sheet! Then she uses them for sauces – sounds like a great idea! Have you done this before?

If you’re just now joining my gardening journey, I’m learning as I go grow and sharing along the way:

• First I built the raised beds
• Then I added dirt
• Then I added plants
• and for fun, we created a DIY Worm Compost Bin
• Our first harvest, lettuce rejoice and be glad

The garden is part of our quest to be more self-sufficient this year. We also recently got chickens! See our chicken journey here.

How’s your garden doing?