The garden is producing food!

Okay, so its only a few ripe tomatoes and some nice green beans to add to our salads, but still there is food ready to be picked.  The kids are excited to help with picking the current available produce and the older two are actually trustworthy enough to pick only what is ready.

As you will see in the pictures the garden is very green and resembles a small jungle.  We stayed small this year and still tried to plant as much as we could in the small area.  Lesson learned.  While it works, we have space in the yard and will devote more to our garden next summer.  Then maybe you could look at the next picture and see that there are several plants growing, and not just a sea of green! 

Madeline directing Owen where to go to pick the beans.  She likes to instruct him and he usually is pretty easy going about listening to her (even when he shouldn't!)

Trying to avoid stepping on plants in order to get at other plants which is not an easy task.

 The pepper plants are staying small but two are producing some peppers, so maybe they are supposed to stay small?  I don't really know as I have had little success with them over the years. But peppers are peppers and these are growing so I am happy

The peppers are growing.

And there are a few more hiding out under the leaves. 

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And the mystery of the viney plants in the corner of the garden is solved.  They are all pumpkins.  And we have four pumpkins growing round, which is good since we have four kids.

It's a pumpkin!

Another pumpkin!

And a third pumpkin!!

I found my cucumber plant growing on the other side of the beans, not where I marked it.  Next time I need to mark the seeds when they are planted, not a few days later!

I am excited to see how many tomatoes we get (not pictured since most are still green).  I have never made my own pasta sauce but with the amount of green tomatoes growing in the garden it is on my to-do list this year.  Now I just need to find a really good, and preferably simple, recipe.