Well, our first year of gardening has come to an end.  The vegetable beds have been turned over, plants and remaining vegetables composted into the whole thing.  All in all, it was an interesting experience!

The tomatoes did the best.  I’d say we got about 15-20 that we ate, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but given the condition of our yard, was better than I was expecting.  There were another 20-30 that just didn’t get a chance to ripen–because of the cool, rainy spring, they flowered late, and left me with a lot of small, green tomatoes at the end of the season, when the garden was no longer in direct sunlight.

The basil was also amazing.  After losing two plants early on to some overly curious animal, the other two really took off, and were the size of small bushes when it was all said and done.  We enjoyed a lot of fresh pesto.

We got a few decent sized cucumbers, and they were quite tasty.  None of the zucchini or yellow squash worked out, though.  The blossoms were beautiful, and we had quite a few of them on the vine, but they all spoiled after a few days.  No idea what that was all about.

Both the jalapeños and carrots were miniature size.  No surprise with the carrots–I figured with the state of the soil in the yard, they probably wouldn’t go down too deep.  They were still delicious, though.  True to her nickname, Bunny especially liked them!  We didn’t actually use any of the jalapeños.  We got about six to eight of them, but they didn’t ripen at the same time, and they were seriously two inches long at the most.  I just couldn’t figure out how use them–no idea what happened there!

The radishes and onions completely bombed.  The celery grew alright, but our resident caterpillars ate most of it.  Oh well, they probably needed it more than we did, and I did get some cool pictures of them. The cilantro was wonderful, and now that I know about it’s short growing cycle, I can plant it in rotations in the future.

So, I think I’ll probably try my hand at gardening again next year.  I’ll probably focus more on tomatoes and less on the other stuff, since they grew so well, and we use them so much.  I would like to figure out the jalapeños, though, so that I could have most of the ingredients to make fresh pico next summer!