2020 Backyard Garden

This year our garden has done well.  Not quite as good as previous years, but still good.  I believe we may need to look into having our soil treated or tested to get the results that we got our first year (three years ago now). 
Our squash and zucchini were prolific this year, but they died much faster than any other year.  This is the first year that the shell peas I planted actually came up and produced.  I got three pickings off of them before they bit the dust.  

Gwendolyn had fun helping me shell them.

I planted more green beans this year than any other year, and they did great.  I tried two rows of pole beans which I will NOT try again next year.  They taste so stringy that they're hard to enjoy while being eaten. 

Our watermelon was good again.  Most of our watermelon were fed to the chickens because we just couldn't eat that many!

The girls enjoyed the ones we had though!

The corn was pretty special this year though.  Most of the corn stalks grew to be about four feet tall and then grew tassles and the smallest. skinniest ears known to man.  The girls and I harvested them all, and discovered that of the two varieties we planted. one was almost definitely a type of field corn.  So the chickens, rabbit, and birds at the birdfeeder enjoyed all of those. 

Gwen and Lucie were very helpful husking the corn.

Most of the ears looked like this:

And a VERY FEW looked like this.

The good ears cooked down to be 6 small bags of corn to freeze.

Dan and Gwendolyn planted sunflowers this year.  Because they were planted late, I didn't think they would amount to much, but they all bloomed beautifully and the girls were very excited to see them!

Three weeks ago, we had our first hard frost and since then, everything in the garden has died.  We pulled out all the plants that still had green on them and fed them to the chickens.  

I didn't plant any big red tomatoes this year, but just left up the volunteer plants that came up from last years seed.  We still had more tomatoes than we could use.  I did plant two sun gold tomato plants and we had more than enough of them for salads and snacking.  Lucinda liked to pick the green ones.  

So that is our garden this year! We only got a few cantaloupe and we did pick TONS of bell peppers, but I forgot to get a picture of them.  The kale did well again as usual.  We are having special meetings this week at the church, so though we're busy with those, I've taken it easier on some of my weekly chores.  I finally was able to sit down and make a post on the old blog! This morning we walked to the nursing home and got to see (through the windows) the residents who used to attend our service when we were allowed to have it.  We miss them very much.  
Keep your eyes peeled for another post soon!