Harvesting from the Garden

We are growing several varieties of organic heirloom tomatoes.  We have big beefsteak types, small Roma types, even some that are pink!  Also, banana peppers, green bell peppers, cucumbers, and of course tons of zucchini and summer squash still coming into the kitchen daily! 

We are also growing several varieties of organic heirloom sweet corn!  Since so much of today's corn supply is GMO, I no longer even buy corn from farm stands.  Instead, we grow our own.  It is fun to husk the ears and see which kind of corn was inside.  Some types have done quite well, others we would not have again next year.  The drought this month certainly has had an effect on the corn growth as well.

We still have a lot of zucchini and summer squash to use up.  Just about every day I am testing and tweaking recipes to use in my (quickly!) upcoming zucchini recipe ebook!  We have found some really good, new ways to use zucchini that are definitely more interesting than just making zucchini bread over and over again.  :)

For the corn, we will probably eat it every night for dinner until we're tired of doing so, and I'll be freezing the husked ears of corn whole, in gallon-size ziploc bags.  I don't even blanch them.  Just stick 'em in the bag and freeze.  Works just fine for us and we enjoy the corn throughout the rest of the year.

For the tomatoes and peppers, I'm thinking of canning homemade salsa this year.  For some reason I have never done this, even though I started canning probably 18 years ago and have canned tons of other things.  I am on the lookout for a good salsa recipe, so if you know of one, let me know!

People keep asking me how we kept the bugs off of our garden.  This is certainly our most successful organic garden yet.  I will admit that in other years we have just planted, let things grow, and if the bugs got to it, we didn't fight back.  The addition of the natural, homemade bug repellent that my husband used on our organic garden this summer has made a huge difference in the amount of bugs and quality of produce we've had.  For the most part, everything coming out of our garden looks really good and hasn't been buggy at all.  You can check it the recipe here.