I Won't Have Too Many Garden Vegetables This Summer

Posted by Genna Cockerham Aug 4, 2009

My husband is a great gardener but this year has been full of surprises.

Using Home-Grown Vegetables

Tonight I canned four pints of pickled peppers using Andrea Chesman's recipe from The Garden Fresh Vegetable Cookbook.

This strikes me as funny for several reasons. In the first place, I never thought I would be making pints of pickled peppers. In the second place, I don't like banana peppers and I never planned to have them in my garden. They were given to me as a thank you for hosting a neighborhood picnic. I guess the guy didn't really enjoy meeting his neighbors or perhaps I made a bad impression. Either way, the banana peppers were planted and they have taken off like wild. So tonight I found myself listening to an easy listening compilation that I received as one of my many freebies by mail while canning pickled peppers.

How Does Our Garden Grow?

This year, I am tempted to say our garden is growing poorly. But it's really all the fault of the tomatoes. We had high hopes for the tomatoes. My husband loving planted 22 tomato plants with tomatoes specifically for canning. I love to hate canning tomatoes. The tomatoes, which like the entire garden was planted two weeks later than intended, have developed bad spots on the bottom. We have since learned it is from uneven watering. With our well, we can't change the watering. It's heartbreaking to go out there and see red tomatoes ... with black bottoms. So our impression of our garden is very jaded.

Roasting Green Beans and Eating Cherry Tomatoes

There are some parts of our garden that are doing well. We had enough zucchini to eat some, make zucchini bread and try Chesman's Zapple pie recipe. We had more yellow squash than I care to mention, several eggplants, a couple spaghetti squash, radishes and decorative sunflowers. I canned 22 pints of bread and butter pickles. Our corn is looking good and there are lots of ripening acorn squash out there too.

The cherry tomato plant, the 100 Cherries variety, is producing cherry tomatoes by the dozens each day. Although Chesman has a roasted cherry tomato recipe, my kids are going through the cherries fast enough that we don't need to do anything but wash them.

The green beans are also producing: We've had three batches to feed our family of five. There is only one way I ever want to eat green beans and that is roasted. Chesman says that you'll never have enough green beans after you eat them roasted and she is right.

The Best Way to Eat Garden Vegetables

Actually, the best thing I learned from Chesmas is you can roast any vegetable. Want to try it? Pour a couple tablespoons of olive oil over any vegetable, mix in some salt and pepper and spread it all out on a cookie sheet. I hate to clean dishes so I just mix it up on the cookie sheet covered in aluminum foil. Put it in a hot oven until the veggies start to brown slightly. Hate cauliflower or eggplant? You won't after you roast it!

Planning Next Year's Garden

My husband and I have big plans for next year's garden. I plan to find a way to avoid planting banana peppers. Sabotage, anyone? My husband plans to run the garden all the way to the woods and add cantaloupe and maybe watermelon. I plan to skip the yellow squash and go right toward the zucchini. And there will be another 100 Cherries and twice as many green bean plants.