Family Organic Garden Progress

The best reason for our family to grow a little, organic family garden is that everyone has been involved this summer.  From my husband helping me water to the kids planting and picking beside me, it's been for everyone.  I'm proud that we've had some days when an entire meal came directly from the garden.  Grilled squash with fresh heirloom tomatoes and romaine lettuce filled our plates for some dinners.  I'll be picking pole beans again today for another meal.

Blanching and freezing squash has helped me save much of that harvest to cook with through fall and winter.  Now we're getting excited about pumpkins.  We have a small harvest of about four Small Sugar Pumpkins from Sow True Seed (thanks again for providing the seeds for our garden), we've fended off a late summer attack from squash bugs that's stunting them, and we've planted a second group of pumpkins in hopes of a fall harvest.  These heirlooms are touted as classic pumpkin pie bakers.

We have so many Cherry Sweetie Tomatoes that we can't pick them fast enough, all from one packet of seeds.  A large harvest of Cherokee Purple Heirloom Tomatoes is slowly ripening now on the vine.  I have hopes of canning the large tomatoes.

I bought a packet of seeds at the store for a second seeding of leaf lettuce, plus we've planted Nobel Giant Spinach, Red Russian Kale and Winter Spaghetti Squash.  I also planted some squash seeds I had saved from last year.  If these things grow, we should be able to continue gardening through the fall.  Luckily we've had a couple of nourishing rains in the days since this planting.

Occasionally we take seeds from foods we're eating and give them a little spot in the garden to see if they'll grow.  So, a little cantaloupe seems to have popped up, too.

When we started our garden from seed this spring, the premise was that if our busy family can grow their own food with organic methods, any family can do it.  It's growing!  We've been excited to partner with Sow True Seed on this project because the small, Southern business promotes organic, heirloom and open pollinated seeds that help preserve our ability to keep growing real food year after year.  Don't you just love gardening?