Fruits of our Labor: About our harvest in this first year of having our lasagna style raised beds

This summer, our garden was on a bit of a slow schedule; all of our plants produced, but much later than I would have anticipated. This had some unfortunate consequences. Perhaps the biggest issue is that right now we have loads of green tomatoes, but we are now in fall and have already had a couple nights of frost. Those tomatoes are never going to turn red, and saddly this mean we only were able to eat one delicious tomato from our garden all summer. We did get some of the little orange tomatoes, but only one or two a day, and my two year old son always gobbled those right up. I really wanted to eat some of them, but who is going to say no when their toddler wants to eat vegetables? Not me.

Our multi-colored zucchini had loads of blossoms, but only a couple ever got big enough to pick. Now it's been too cold for them and the tiny fruits have rotted into mush or have been nibbled on by our friendly neighborhood mammals. The ones we did get to eat however were delicious.

I was fairly certain that our rainbow chard and broccoli were both failed attempts this year. But both are still currently produced and we have been enjoying cooking with these fresh veggies.

An Indian inspired stir fry made from mung beans, and rainbow chard and yellow zucchini from our garden

Our kale did okay; at one point a bunch of the kale got eaten, but it managed to spring back and I've been able to harvest it a couple times. We used it mainly to make into smoothies (1/4 cup kale, 1/2 banana, 10 green grapes). My son loves these, and it's such a great way to get green veggies into his growing body.

Harvesting kale for smoothies

Our cucumbers are really late. When everyone else we know was handing cucumbers out because they had more than they knew what to do with, ours were still flowers and tiny little buds of fruit. Now, in October, we have probably a dozen or so cucumber to pick and more on the way. Hopefully we will be able to enjoy them before the cold weather destroys them. We have been enjoying slicing them up to have with meals, in cucumber sandwhiches, or just snacking on whole cucumbers while we play outside. They have a delicious flavor!

Cucumber hanging from our trellis

Our spinach failed. Our corn failed too; it never really got big enough, and then the beans that we planted alongside them went wild and knocked them over. On the bright side, we had a fantastic bean crop this summer. Both our bush beans and pole beans produced huge amounts of beans, and we had lots of fresh and  steamed beans all summer.

Our multicolored bush beans

The other plant that did particularly well this year was the baby mesclun mix. The lettuce loved the shade of the cucumber plants (we grew it under the trellises), and we ended up having more mesclun mix than we could keep up with. It was nice never having to buy lettuce all summer.

Bush beans, cucumbers and baby mesclun mix

salad made from mesclun mix, cucumbers, peas and nasturtiums all  from our garden

Still showing promise are our little pie pumpkins. My son and I have really enjoyed going out to check on them each day, and now they are starting to turn orange. I am looking forward to the day we can harvest them and make some yummy pumpkin pies!

So, while it wasn't as amazing a harvest as I had hoped this season, we still got a lot of delicious vegetables and I feel very hopeful about next year. We will be able to put in lots of new layers into our lasagna gardens this fall when we eventually "but them to bed", and this time they will have all winter to cook and become deliciously fertile soil. It has been so much fun going out into the garden every morning with my toddler and seeing how excited he gets to help Mama pick beans, or tomatoes, or kale. Just to be able to show him how plants grow, then to have him help me cook them into delicious meals was worth all the effort we put into our little garden.