Community garden plots

Our community garden plots are bursting with life. It's where I spend several hours a week weeding, watering, weeding some more, harvesting, eating, reading and smiling. Yup, smiling. How can you not smile when you witness the seed you planted become food.

We've been snacking on sugar snap peas for a few weeks now.

The Roma tomato plants are loaded with fruit. The Big Boy and the Yellow tomato plants are bursting with fruit on their branches as well. I'd say they should be ripe in a week or two. I'm sooo ready! Bring on the salsa, tomato soup, stewed tomatoes, pizza sauce, diced tomatoes, all that is tomato making, canning business ON! I am sooo ready to don my green rooster apron!

The pumpkin plants are flowering now. We have 5 different pumpkin varieties planted. Some are for eating and others will be used to host our first ever Jackolantern carving party this Fall.

This pickling cucumber plant is going to burst any day now. We'll be making dill pickles, sweet pickles. relishes and all sorts of cucumber salads.

Green peppers are almost ready to eat. I know we can't rush mother nature but please, ripen my tomatoes somewhat soon so I can use these peppers along with the jalapeno peppers to make some salsa and stewed tomatoes. Yesterday I used our last homemade jar of stewed tomatoes. I'll need to add about 10 jars or so to our stewed tomato needs for the year.

Tomatoes and squashes are loving this warm weather.

Below is our one and only eggplant plant that survived all this rain we've been having. There are a few flowers so maybe we'll get a couple eggplants from this. We've never grown eggplant so we shall see. I love the suspense of the surprise.

My lil, 6ft tall brother and his girlfriend standing by a stalk of our sweet corn. This is the 1st year we have ever grown corn. Our soil definitely needs more nutrients and after this season we will be able to add manure and compost to our plots. This was our 1st year at the community garden and we have no way of knowing what was planted where last season. Next year we're going to be closer to having "black gold."

We've harvested oodles upon oodles of green beans. We have 4 more rows than these two that are providing us an abundance of beans and on Sunday I planted 4 more rows where the potatoes were. Ohhh yeah, last week I harvested the rest of our potatoes. Our tater tower at home is still intact and will be harvested in the next couple weeks.