A Bountiful Harvest

Happy November! Hope you all had a fun Halloween filled with sweet treats. My two favorite trick or treaters came by this afternoon for a follow-up visit. Last night we made a deal - come back today after school and take all the leftover candy. I'm sure you know why. Thank you Cori and Cole!

 

So yesterday I shared a few pictures of my fall and Halloween decor. I love decorating with natural elements, especially if they come from my own garden. And this year we had a bountiful harvest from early spring right through fall.

 

But let's start at the very beginning ... Last year at this time we were working on landscaping our backyard and decided to update the vegetable garden with raised beds. We went from one large rectangular garden to five individual raised beds. One of the benefits of raised beds is that you can actually grow more plants in a smaller amount of space. Each bed was filled with a nutrient-rich mix made especially for vegetables. But my favorite feature is the benches all around the perimeter of each bed.

 

By spring, we were anxious to get planting. My husband actually is the vegetable gardener and I'm in charge of the flower beds.

One of his favorite features is irrigation in each individual bed. No more dragging the hose and sprinkler through the yard!

Megan always loves the sugar snap peas. They never make it into the house. They end up getting eaten right by the garden. See, those benches really do come in handy! And we always plant the bush pea variety. But this year they got a little carried away and we ended up adding trellises. 

 

The tomatoes and peppers went a little crazy too. Are you seeing a theme develop here?

 

 

 Our neighbors were invited to come and help themselves!
 

 

This bed was filled with radishes, onions, red beets and carrots.

 

Colanders of veggies were finding their way to my kitchen all summer long! 

 

 

 

 And once the summer veggies were finishing up, the pumpkins and gourds started taking over.

 

 

 We should have known we were in trouble just by looking at the size of the leaves.
 

 

 

Seriously, they really were taking over!

 

 Vines actually started growing from one bed to the other.

 

And then they were spilling out into the lawn!
 

And finally we just had to start picking them, one wheelbarrow at a time.

Aren't they cool?

I totally lost count of those little round bumpy ones!

And just before our first frost, they were still trying to grow!

And if all that wasn't enough, we had a crazy volunteer plant in our groundcover bank.

 

It just kept growing and growing!

Vines in every direction!

Yup, more little round bumpy ones!

And we just kept picking them!

 
So now you know where all the gourds and pumpkins in my fall decor came from - right from our own little crazy garden!