Garden Haul: What We Grew in our First Garden Season

Now that we've been wrapping up our spring/summer garden and have gotten our fall garden going, I wanted to share a little bit more about exactly what varieties and how much we grew in our first season of gardening. 

Our overall haul was:

• Zucchini (Black Beauty): 21
• Yellow Squash (Early Prolific Straightneck): 19
• Eggplant (Ping Tung and Black Beauty): 22
• Slicer Tomatoes (Purple Cherokee and Box Car Willie): 306
  
• Everglades Tomatoes: About 2 lbs
• Green Beans (Contender): About 2 lbs
• Cantaloupe (Honey Rock): 1
• Watermelon (Crimson Sweet): 15
  
• Luffa: 8 (so far)
• Peppers: 10
• Sweet Potatoes: 2 (so far)
• Seminole Pumpkin: 1 (so far)
• Black Eyes Peas: About 1 lb
• Sunflower Seeds: 1/3 lb
• Basil, oregano, lemongrass, rosemary, longevity spinach, dill, chives, green onions: We didn't track an amount, but there was plenty!
  

By far, our best producer was tomatoes; we had 6 Box Car Willie tomato plants going that were started from seed and 1 Purple Cherokee plant that I picked up as a start at a big box store. The Purple Cherokee was my favorite variety as far as flavor and I would absolutely grow it again; the fruits did have a tendency to crack on the plant after we experienced heavy rainfall, though. 

It got to a point where we were inundated with them, and started giving them away to family, coworkers, and neighbors and making big batches of pasta sauce. 

We also made the most delicious caprese and ratatouille (recipe here) and homemade pasta sauce (recipe here) with them.

I was getting sick of tomatoes towards the end of summer, but boy, I'm missing them now. 

Our watermelon crop also kept us from having to buy fruit most of the summer, and took over a large chunk of our yard just vining along outside of the garden bed. It was such a vigorous grower that it choked out the cantaloupe plant that we had in the same garden bed (that and pickle worms were the reason we only got one very sweet, yummy cantaloupe). 

Our zucchini and yellow squash did well initially and gave us a decent amount of food, but again, pickle worms and squash vine borers moved in and no amount of BT or covering the fruits with organza bags was enough to control them. Our luffa plant, on the other hand, was probably the biggest gardening surprise for us, and completely took over two cattle panel trellises and is still going. So far, we've harvested eight, but this monster will keep going until it really starts to cool down. We'll be using most of them for sponges, but we did try eating one while it was small (about the side of a typical zucchini at the grocery store) and found it to have a similar flavor and texture to zucchini. They just grow so quickly that it's difficult to catch them before they're up to an inedible size.

We were a victim of Peppergate 2023, and ended up growing everything but the bell pepper seeds we had planted. Hopefully we'll have better luck next year with that; we may just purchase starts that are already fruiting from now on so we can be more sure of what we're getting. 

Eggplant ended up being a summer favorite of ours, and we loved making Pasta alla Norma with ours (recipe here). We got both of our eggplants from starter plants, and the Ping Tung eggplant variety did particularly well. 

Overall, this gardening experience has brought me so much joy, and the biggest struggle has been moving on with the new seasons, pulling plants that are on their way out to make room for new ones, and cutting back the chaos that is watermelon, sweet potato, pumpkin, and luffa vines that would take over the world if I let them.