The final numbers are in…

Two Stooges

And now what you have all been waiting for, or not. Like I said in an earlier post the garden crop was pretty good. We had a variety of tomato plants this year, Cherry, Roma, Big Boys, and a Hybrid of some kind. They all over produced, but some plants under produced. I don’t hold it against the butternut squash. It was it’s first year, he was new to the garden, didn’t have any real friends. We’ll call it a transition year. But there will be no mercy next year! The butternut plant grew to over 10 feet in length but it only produced one fruit, or is it a veggie? Either way it didn’t pull it’s weight. And don’t even get me started on the cucumbers!

We also have an apple tree in the back yard. It produces apples on an every other year basis and this was a fruit bearing year. Both Wendi and I commented that we had never seen so many apples on the tree. I picked and picked and picked and had some help picking and then picked some more. Finally I had reached my limit, both fruit wise and height wise. Even with the ladder and a 8-foot apple picker I wasn’t able to get up high enough to get all the apples. The squirrels were able to enjoy them and then drop them, half eaten, in the yard.

We decided this year we would learn to can food. And we almost did! I bought a canning book and canning supplies. In the end it was easier to freeze everything than can it. Maybe next year.

So how much did we get you ask. Well here is the list of what we froze and ate:

• 40 Quarts of apples (all frozen)
• 10 Pints of apple butter (frozen and almost gone)
• 15 Quarts of tomatoes (frozen)
• 6 Pints of salsa (frozen)
• 2 Quarts of Green Beans (we ate them when they were ready, none saved)
• A few zucchinis that we ate throughout the summer
• 1 head of lettuce that made a really nice salad one night
• 10 Jalapenos peppers (they went into the salsa)

We got exactly zero carrots and cucumbers. Our thought was bad seeds on the carrots as they usually grow. There were enough peas for one meal. We planted onion sets this year instead of starting with seeds. However the onions didn’t grow any bigger than when we first put them in the ground. I don’t know if they weren’t deep enough or if it was too hot for them. I think it was the heat. I have yet to successfully grow a green pepper and this year was no different. It was the best year for the green peppers though. Out of five plants, one pepper grew and it was big enough to actually look like a green pepper. However it did not grow much bigger than a golf ball…

Enjoy the pictures…

I'm pickin' apples!

There's a good one

Look at this one

Done pickin'

The supervisor

The Slaves

Peelin' apples

Cuttin' apples

Good help is so hard to find