I had big plans by the end of last summer for our gardens this summer, per usual!

I tend to always have lofty plans – just ask my poor hubby, ha, ha.

Blake thought the plans were good and, per usual, made our dreams come true!

Tate and I specifically really enjoy our little garden and outdoor space and we were looking forward to expanding our garden to twice its size!

Here’s what an afternoon of planning looks like for Tate and I – books, paper, pencils and a BIG thumbs up!

I knew that expanding the garden was asking A LOT this year – because, well, two weddings.

But I also knew that our younger children still needed some normal life to live even with two weddings!

My trio (Lane, Tate and Eliza) and I visited our favorite greenhouse earlier than usual this year (on May 9th because the weather was so nice) and bought our garden plants that day!

We also put an order in with Johnny’s seeds for the rest.

It is SO much fun to plan a garden!!

One of the first things we did to our garden space to get it ready was to turn the soil in one of our old garden beds – and we also removed the black plastic that was under the soil.

This turned out to be a very good idea my hubby had, because I can now tell you that that particular garden bed did very well!

Tate and I went ahead and got that old garden bed planted right away after checking the weather forecast!

I cannot remember planting our garden ever as early as May 11th!

It was about that same time we started seeing strawberry blooms in our other old garden bed that was still full of strawberry plants.

Some of the strawberry plants were on their third year of blooms, but most of that garden bed was full of berries blooming for their second year.

We had a WONDERFUL harvest of strawberries this year and even got eleven quarts in the freezer off of that one 16′ x 6′ bed!

The weekend after Grant and Kamryn’s wedding we decided to try to build our two new beds for the garden.

It was a BIG job, but we actually finished it in one day!

A few days later, on Memorial Day, we planted the new garden beds.

Eliza helped with labeling everything so we would remember what we did!!

By the middle of June we were seeing red!

SO MANY BERRIES!!

We ate berries with every meal, we made desserts with berries, and I started freezing berries.

It was such a rewarding thing to pick berries everyday!

We had so much rain in the earlier months of summer this year.

Our garden did so well because of that!

This was our VERY best year for cucumbers!

We made so many jars of refrigerator pickles, ate many bowls of creamy cucumber salad, and had cucumbers for snacks all the time.

I need to make a note to order these same cucumber seeds next year.

We also planted green peppers, jalapeno peppers, poblano peppers, radishes, carrots, zuchini, green beans, marigolds, tomatoes, leeks, onions, basil, chives, kale….

I think that is everything?

Oh – we also planted kohlrabi and cabbage, but our bunny friends enjoyed them and they never came back enough for us to harvest.

We also fought the Japanese beetles this year, but oddly enough, they did not arrive until the beginning of August.

The other years we have had them they were here the beginning of July!

I don’t want to know what Blake spayed on our tree in our front yard, but the beetles were destroying it.

We used neem oil on the garden and it really helped!

We enjoyed so much out of those little garden beds!

I shredded all of the zucchini and froze it in two cups portions.

So far I have 26 bags of it in our freezer!

Take a look at our kohlrabi after the bunnies had it for dinner one night –

Addie got us a box of green peppers from the Mennonite bulk food store she works for.

I LOVE having green peppers in our freezer!!

We just clean them, seed them, quarter them, and bag them up!

It just takes a few seconds running the pieces under warm water to be able to chop them up and use them in your recipes straight from the freezer.

Such a great savings!!!

Tate and I just harvested most of our onions this past week and have them curing right now.

We also cleaned up the garden quite a bit and starting pulling things that were finished.

We also harvested and then pulled out our green beans because that is where the Japanese beetles were hanging out!

Did you notice that kohlrabi in the photo above?

We did get a few very small ones – and promptly ate them with a salt shaker near by!

SO yummy!

Glad we got to have a few bites!!

Well, that was a very satisfying walk down garden memory lane!

Just when you think you have done nothing “well” in your life for months now – I need to show my over thinking mind this post, don’t I?!

Did you guess?

About next year?

Yep!

You better warn my poor hubby, because Tate and I have big plans for starting our own seeds indoors with a little grow room somewhere.

Haven’t figured out where yet – but that’s what Blake is good at – figuring out how to make it all happen!

Lord willing, it will be another wonderful season of growing some food, learning new things, and enjoying each other’s company as we do!

Did you all garden this year?

Here’s to many more trips to the garden to harvest before it gets cold!!