What organic gardening will get ya

The organic gardening adventure/experiment of 2009 is now complete.  Here are our results:

Cucumbers:  F

Most of them were so bitter we couldn’t eat them.  But it was okay because mom had so many that we had all we wanted.  Their eggplant, broccoli, and squash gets A grades for sure.

Tomatoes:  B

They tasted delicious especially the roma grapes, but they came on late, and we fought the snails all summer long.  In fast, those damn snails made me really really want to go buy chemicals and say “Take that you little bastards.”

Strawberries:  D

The few we got were tasty but we didn’t get nearly enough.  Rhubarb too.  But hey, we have next summer for these little guys.

Peppers: A

The serranos were a bit too spicy, but that’s what we have Doody for.  The fajita bells were tasty.  The Anaheim and Poblano peppers singlehandedly made the summer.  I’m a pepper roasting, skin-peeling expert at this point.  The banana peppers were good too but I have yet to try them pickled. (Thanks mom for doing that.)

Watermelon: ? Maybe the watermelon should get a good grade, and the gardeners should get failing ones.  I just don’t know.  We picked one too soon so we waited on another and it split right there in the garden.  The few we got that were ripe (but not too ripe) were good.  But with 3 watermelon plants, we expected more than 3 tasty watermelons.

Herbs: B

The cilantro was a bust but the basal and mint made excellent pizza and mojitos respectively.  But don’t get them confused.  Casey spent all summer cutting sprigs of mint and basal to put on his dresser “to smell good his room.”  It was an odd combination at first, but one we got used to.  Now that we know the cilantro/cardamon progression, I’m sure we can keep the cilantro longer next year.

Pumpkins:  A+

Our cucumbers may have been bitter and our tomatoes a tasty treat for the snails of the neighborhood, but our pumpkins were a blast.  How do you like them pumpkins?

Only 5 this year, probably because we cut a lot of the pumpkinflower for quesadillas.  Last year we had 13, but none as big as these.

Lifting with your waist and below might be good advice.  But it wasn’t enough to get me to carry these.  So I rolled them.

Casey’s masterpiece, with the help of Will and Mamma Kim and lots of other folks.

Riley’s working on a pumpkin that pukes.  If he ever gets it done I’ll post another picture.

There’s something really powerful and amazing about growing your own food.  This is the 3rd year we’ve had a garden – and this is the biggest garden yet- stay tuned for next summer.  I have no idea where we’ll be, but I imagine we’ll be gardening.