2021 Garden

Before  we adopted, I was a pretty avid gardener albeit with some space limitations.  Nonetheless, I grew most of the vegetables and herbs Craig and I would eat in any given summer.  I tried to continue gardening after the kids arrived, but there just wasn't the time nor did I have the energy and the attempts I did make were consequently not very successful.  I am not a person that sets New Year's resolutions, but at the end of last year it did occur to me that I missed gardening, so I decided to give it a more serious effort in 2021.  Below are some photos from the season.

Our first crop for the year consisted of these gorgeous radishes.

We had parsley, basil, green onions, and cilantro.  We used fresh basil almost every day and were even able to save it through a beetle infestation.

We had yellow and red tomatoes.  The yellow tomato plant was started indoors from seeds that my mom brought me from Bulgaria some years ago.  This single plant was extremely prolific well into October and I think must have produced around 200 tomatoes.

Just for fun I started two Jigsaw Pepper plants from seed indoors.  They struck me as very ornamental, so that was my motivation.  Both plants bore fruit and were fun to watch through the summer months.  I think we probably had over 300 of these tiny, super hot peppers.  We used them sparingly for cooking, made super delicious hot pepper jelly that's so good on grilled cheese sandwiches, and dried a bunch to give as part of Christmas presents for our spicy-loving, cooking friends.

We tried our hands at two kinds of cucumbers, but didn't quite have enough space for them to provide us with a big harvest.  We did get regular cucumbers at least weekly and there was one, lone Armenian cucumber from rare seed.

Emilia's take on gardening

Armenian cucumber

We also had thrown some pumpkins into various spots in the yard after Thanksgiving 2020 and were surprised with volunteer pumpkins in 2021.

Many days I went outside and harvested my lunch which I very much enjoyed.

I would say our 2021 garden was a success despite some frustrating moments created by an overly enthusiastic little helper and some pesky beetles.  I am already looking forward to 2022.