July in the garden

The garden is moving along, but not as lush and large as i thought it might be. I think this was mainly due to the way we planted things this year. We were doing rows, keeping distance and not paying 100% attention to the watering and care due to life items (kids and the like), so there were times things got dry or needed a bit more attention.

However, we do have some winners in the bunch, this round going to the Black Krim Tomatoes. They really came out in full force and seemed to thrive in the area we planted them in.

Talia and Seneca love planting and tending to the garden. I think next year will see Talia putting even more energy into planting, watering and tending to things. We'll see. :)

Gathering onions and chives

Onion taste! :)

Early Krims were a beautiful green color

Chives

Onions

Black Krim

Our other tomatoes.....well....they didn't thrive. :)

Meh

Shana's delicious tomato soup with some of ours in with some other items from the garden

We planted green beans and they shot up in about 30 hours! Crazy!

Green beans

 Corn shot up as well. They both seem to love the sun they are getting.

And, the other benefit of being out in the garden - the done we purchased from Talia's old school when they moved locations. The kids love it. Talia is getting really strong climbing the thing! :)

It was really nice taking some time to just hang out in back today. I was just talking about the fact that we have not had many "summer days" to just sort of hang out. Shana pointed out that we did actually have the days, but we were not chilling in back during them. We were GO GO GOing, as usual. So, making more time to enjoy the yard and garden in on my list! 

We're feeling the effect of the California water crisis as well. We've just let our lawn go, which isn't saying a whole lot - it was really in bad shape already. I'm looking into more planter boxes or raised beds to take over some of our lawn space. While it's nice to have a place for the kids to play, it would be nice to have a little more garden space as well. We'll see. I still have strawberry gutter planting in mind, so the extra space would be fun.

Our plums have come and gone already and we really didn't do much with them this year. We didn't even get jam or jelly made this round, but some were eaten by friends and family at least.

We didn't get apricots this year which was sad. I think the tree produced around six in total - two of which ended up on the ground, sadly. Maybe we'll have more next year.

Our fig tree produced a ton this year as did the olive tree. We need to see how to process them both and when to pick 'em. 

CHEERS!