Susan has planted our garden in the back yard and we are hopeful for a good harvest.

The way things are going in the country, this might be the year we  may need produce from the garden to make it through the winter.

Susan is a much better gardener than I. In the past, I have had little success with corn (you need a lot of it because it is pollinated by wind), black-eyed peas (they are a lot of work with little reward) and broccoli (again – lots of work but little profit).

Last year, I didn’t plant anything and this year I may not again.

She carefully set up this year’s garden in the fall last year. She put mulch in to control the weeds and she set up several raised beds to better control pests and weeds.

She has always done well with cucumbers and with all the rain we have had in the last several months, we are anticipating a bumper crop. She has also learned how to can and last year she put up a couple of dozen jars of sweet and dill pickles. Her pickles are very good. We get so many cucumbers that we give some away to our neighbors and friends at church.

One of the first seeds she planted was lettuce. She planted onions and carrots, too. They have sprouted and we are optimistic that they will produce well.  We get our tomato plants Stringer Nursery near 41st Street and Sheridan Road. They plants always do well and Stan and his employees are very knowledgeable and helpful when it comes gardens and lawn care.

There is nothing like a fresh vine-ripened tomato from your own backyard garden. Once you have tasted these really red tomatoes, the ones you buy at the store just don’t stack up. I hate going to a restaurant where you order a salad or a hamburger and the tomatoes are orange and hard and have virtually no flavor. 

We like to eat tomato slices with fresh mozzarella cheese in the summer. It’s a treat.

We didn’t have a great year with tomatoes last year (and so we didn’t really give many away). Susan freezes some tomatoes every year and we use them in chili and other recipes.

She always seems to have great luck with herbs. We have a rosemary bush that keeps getting bigger and bigger.  We really don’t do much to it but it survives winter. It is a very fragrant herb.

Susan does well with her basil. She uses that a lot in cooking. And she cures the basil and gives it away as gifts sometimes.

I planted some mint a couple of years ago and it keeps coming back with a vengeance. It smells so really good. Even our dogs like to take a whiff. We really haven’t harvested the mint but it would be excellent for making herbal tea.

This will be the second year that I haven’t planted pumpkins. They are easy to grow but it’s tough to save them from bugs.

And the plants take up enormous space in a garden. Susan likes to make pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread from scratch (it is delicious). But we discovered that you can buy pie pumpkins a few days after Halloween very cheaply.

Maybe next year I will try pumpkins again.

This year, Susan will grown sweet potatoes in large buckets. You punch holes in the bottom and fill the buckets with dirt and plant your sweet potatoes.

 The advantage to using these large buckets is that it makes it much easier to harvest the sweet potatoes.

A few years ago, we had a great crop underground but it was a ton of work to dig them up (and we missed a few).

If you store them correctly, sweet potatoes can last up to a year. They are delicious and they are very good for you.

We also have some perennial blackberry bushes and a strawberry patch. Each year, they both produce some berries but not a significant amount. Mice got into our strawberries last year.  Plus, when the strawberry crop comes in Oklahoma, they strawberries are cheap and plentiful.

The same is kind of true for blackberries.

Susan plants flowers, too. I used to not think much of planting flowers until I realized that you need blossoms to attract pollinators (like bees) to your vegetable garden.

Gardening is hard work, fun and profitable – but not financially. We probably spend more on gardening supplies than we ever get back in a harvest but the profit is in the exercise plus the satisfaction of growing something.

We put up a new fence around the garden because we have a rabbit problem.

My parents had gardens. I didn’t think much of gardening growing up and none of our kids are very keen on growing stuff.  It’s a nice hobby and it could really come in handy someday.