Gardening

Our garden has had a pretty good year. Especially considering that we moved in mid-March and knowing that it was already time to plant (late February/early March is the best time to plant in Tucson for a lot of things), I just threw some seeds in the ground without much thought or planning. We've had a pretty consistent cherry tomato harvest, gotten a couple acorn squash before the plants died, several good butternut squash, and lots and lots of yellow squash, zucchini and cucumbers.

A couple of weeks ago I went out and harvested a good bunch of squash. The next day I was back out there watering the garden and saw that I had missed some zucchini. How I missed these I have no idea. I KNOW they didn't grow that big overnight. 

Someone on a facebook gardening group I'm on had mentioned that while cucumbers get pithy and gross if they get too big, zucchini just get tastier. So I put those huge zukes to work making zucchini muffins. Then bagged the rest and froze it to make more. I had enough for 9 batches.

Sadly, a few days after that last harvest all my squash and zucchini plants died within 2 days of each other. Stinking vine borers. In my quick planting after we moved in I didn't give any thought "companion planting" to keep pests away. A week later my butternut squash plants all bit the dust, too. At least I got a good harvest before everything died. And next year will be even better because we just about doubled the size of our garden with our backyard project that is mostly done. 

I'll get a picture once it's all green with grass, but our backyard is almost complete! Woohoo! We took out the shed, removed the gravel, added one of the curved garden beds in the corner and both of the short beds along the side walls, and planted grass. All that is left is for the grass to grow (lots and lots of watering to keep it from drying out now that our monsoons have deserted us for a while and it's stinkin' hot) and for us to get some pea gravel for the area that will house the swing set.

Much more kid-friendly than the rock yard with a cactus garden that we had not too long ago. :)