Garden Oddities

I have been so busy this summer that I haven't talked much about the garden.

Yes we did plant a garden.

Yes we did get a ton of good stuff.

Yes we have been preserving and canning.

Here are some of the overall oddities of our garden this year:

We had a tremendous amount of volunteer plants.

This is a spaghetti squash growing in my tomato patch. I did not plant this spaghetti squash. It grew here all on its own.

I had several other squash plants volunteer this year (spaghetti, yellow and butternut, along with some pumpkins!) as well as several tomatillo and tomato plants.

Volunteer gardens are the best!

The items that did the best this year, besides the squash (we have had a bang up year!) were the peppers, tomatoes and strawberries!

Here is a before and after pic of my strawberry patch.

An additional oddity: I am STILL getting strawberries! In OCTOBER. (For those non-gardener types out there strawberry "season" is typically early summer in most areas.)

I took that top picture two days ago. The bowl of strawberries was about a week and a half ago. ODD!

The raspberries are confused as to the season as well. I took this picture on Sunday, too.

Squash:

I have already cooked at least two butternut squash, several (6 or 8) acorn squash, a few spaghetti squash, and this isn't all of what is currently in the "pantry" room. PLUS I have several more of various types still on the vine outside!

Peppers:

Again, this is just some of what we haven't used yet! We have made multiple types and batches of salsa with peppers, we have made chili, we have roasted and frozen a bunch of peppers, we have dried some peppers, we have frozen whole peppers, we have eaten fresh peppers....It is an understatement to say our pepper garden was a success this year.

Tomatoes, oh tomatoes.

Just a sample...we have more than this still ready to eat, plus we have smoked and frozen gallons of them, diced and frozen, cooked with them, dried them, eaten them fresh every day for MONTHS, made multiple sauces, used them in the salsa and the chili...and on and on. I personally planted almost 20 tomato plants (I know) and then I got another  AT LEAST 10 volunteers.

All I can say is that it is a good thing I love tomatoes.

Things that did less well this year than in years past include the basil, cucumbers, eggplant and green beans. We did get some of everything, but not the yields of years past. But, that is part of the joy and wonder of gardening. You just never know what you are going to get!

And just because it is cool and Chris wanted me to post it, here is a picture of a praying mantis that was hanging out with me in the basil patch one day.

Did you garden this year? How did you do? Any crazy producers or oddities?