In the Garden Year 1 - late July and August

Our 1st year in our raised bed gardens is booming with July and August produce! Lots of tomatoes, cucumber, squash, and melon to harvest, and lots of summer favorite recipes!

Raised bed gardens with vining pumpkins and flowers.

Fresh Garden Harvest

July 17, 2019

We are having lots of fun in our first year in the raised bed garden! Everything comes at once and the picking, cooking, and preserving the garden harvest is a part time job!

Tomatoes, bell pepper and cucumber harvested from the garden sitting on a garden bench.

We've stocked the freezer with Healthy Zucchini Cookies, tons of berries for smoothies, and super healthy popsicles. Mulberry jam, jars of pesto, and jars of blanched green beans are frozen and ready for winter.

Large squash, cucumber and green bean plants overgrowing their raised bed garden.

We've been eating lots of salads, jars of Cherry Tomato Pico de Gallo Salsa, Swiss chard and spinach, peppers (a few red, still mostly green), zucchini, pea pods, cauliflower, broccoli and kale.

By August the tomatoes started to come and we've eaten them non-stop! I made bruschetta, and many many plates of veggies with Parmesan Herb Dip.

I made a large batch of Freezer Marinara Sauce and used it to make three pans of lasagna, as well as a couple homemade pizza nights with extra sauce for the freezer.

Garden marinara sauce in two jars to freeze.

Creamy Tomato Basil Fettuccine is one of our favorite dinners to use up the tomatoes. And any extra cherry tomatoes are going into this Panzanella Bread Salad!

Cooking and Preserving

I've made Carrot Hummus, red pepper hummus, and Cilatro Lime Hummus to throw in extra greens and herbs. Garden BLT's with Pesto Aioli and many veggie sandwiches have been our lunches.

I've shredded zucchini into these Double Chocolate Zucchini Muffins and roasted some for this Creamy Mushroom Zucchini Pasta!

Garden harvest, green beans, zucchini, cucumber, peas and tomato.

The broccoli never stops regrowing when you cut it and I've made Broccoli Salad, Cheesey Broccoli Zucchini Soup, and tossed a handful into the Kid's Mac & Cheese.

We have more cucumbers and kale than we can eat! I've chopped, bagged and frozen kale and made Bacon Kale Spaghetti.

Harvesting kale, huge pile on the kitchen counter to chop and freeze.

Kale chopped and in ziplock bags to freeze.

I made refrigerator pickles and jars of giardiniera using the same recipe.

Two jars of giardiniera, pickled fresh garden vegetables.

The bees are everywhere and we've been visited by butterflies, hummingbirds, and built our own fairy garden.

Monarch caterpillar eating milkweed next to the vegetable garden.

As the season fades the pumpkins are so much fun and we've eaten one of them so far, delicious when roasted and mashed with the leftovers going into these Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins or Pumpkin Waffles.

Garden fresh veggies in the kitchen window sill, pumpkin, cucumber, pepper, tomato.

We're getting tons of cantaloupe which are a small variety called Minnesota Midgets. At first I thought these were a total fail being so small, but then we started eating them and it turns out they are delicious, the perfect kid-friendly size!

Garden fresh produce in the kitchen windowsill. Melon, peppers, cucumber.

I don't think we've ever eaten so healthy, but it's all we can do to keep up. The garden has been my summer happy place. Here I am, writing this in September, and I'm watching it still churn out plenty, but also begin its wind down to fall.

It has been a great learning experience for the kids and for me, and I'm already thinking of what we will grow next year!