We’re still in the dog days of summer here in the next lane, eating lots of goodies from Darren’s organic garden, but the hint of fall is upon us.
Just thought I’d stick in a few pics of some of the produce from our garden. Actually all of the land here is certified organic soil. No chemicals, whatsoever and this is a relief. We don’t even need to wash these tomatoes–just rub them off and eat them. Another thing is that getting vegetables from the garden and seeing them sit on the table shows quickly how quickly vegetables will spoil if they haven’t been chemically “treated.” I’ve noticed that store-bought tomatoes will last an unnaturally long time just sitting in the refrigerator or on the table, however our garden-grown tomatoes will begin to go bad in a bit more than a day!
These cherry tomatoes are so sweet. Adanna (granddaughter) loves them. She can eat about 15 of them without stopping! Since there’re no chemicals on them, she can pick them from the garden and plop them in her mouth.
Here’s some of Darren’s corn. As usual, he has 3 corn patches this summer. He never plants in the same exact spots since this would be too much of a drain on the soil and wipe out the nutrients. So, he rotates where he plants. Darren’s corn is known as some of the sweetest corn in the county! Yum-yum.
He also grew lots of beans, cucumbers, potatoes (white, blue, yellow, and red). I grew up on a farm where we grew lots of vegetables but that was a long time ago, so I had forgotten the taste of real tomatoes and potatoes. Trust me–there is very little similarity between the taste of the tomatoes and potatoes bought at the supermarket and real home-grown ones–especially the ones grown in natural soil.
It’s a joy to get back to living more naturally.
I’ve been amazed at the taste of the tomatoes from my garden, so I know what you mean.
May try growing potatoes next year.
OMG, HGG, I just scanned your site. I’ll have to go back and read in depth later. You are on a mission there about preserving food! That is so great for your large family. You remind me of one my sister-in-laws who preserves the onions she raises in her garden by sun-drying them. She sometimes cooks a lot of food though, throughout the year. We don’t eat enough of most foods to even bother preserving them but we still put some away each summer–either canned or frozen. We tend to throw away a lot of garden goodies every year that we’ve preserved because it’s just too much for us to eat.
We’ve frozen a bunch of organic tomatoes for sauces and such during the cooler months and cut the corn off the cobs and frozen a lot of it too. We do eat all the corn. lol We’ve sometimes chopped up eggplant (in past years) and frozen that, but that can get bitter if it’s not handled right.