WOW! You guys did some serious gardening. I used to can tomato juice, green beans, tons of them, but now we just have a few tomato plants and nothing else. Age takes it's toll!

That's amazing....but what a wonderful thing to do and great memories when everyone is involved.

Before I moved here...to the hard clay on the bayou...I lived on an old dairy farm. You could dig the soil up with your hands and I had various little patches that were fenced off.

I didn't have the critters there so much...hardly ever saw a raccoon or a possum and never an armadillo. I had lots of old hay to use as mulch. A neighbor would come with his rototiller and plow it up for me. Had a barn with box stalls and kept horses, so composted the shavings and manure from the stalls.

I grew several kinds of tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, watermelons, cantalopes, corn, peppers, corn, peas, and
brocoli and cauliflower in the winter. Also cabbage. I had herbs and marigolds mixed in with the plants. Was so pretty. I didn't have to drag hoses...water was piped right to the fence.

Well, here...I had one tomato plant come up volunteer from a tomato I tossed out to the wildlife. It didn't get watered and produced two tomatoes. I ate one and gave one to Scarfoot, one of the possums.

Doesn't seem like these things happened in the same life time.

That was some garden Susan. You must have had plenty of space for such a large crop. I know how wonderful all of those fresh veggies must have tasted. Nothing better.

Ah yes, youth certainly has it's perks. I admire you and your husband for your hard work.

We mainly just took the easy route with tomatoe, cucumbers, peppers onion and lettuce. A little corn and egg plant a couple of times too. Sure enjoyed it all. Only thing I ever canned was salsa. I froze mostly.

Lettuce!! How could I have forgotten lettuce??? I had a 60-ft. row of it, lots of different kinds. My favorites were the "summer crisp" varieties from Johnny's Selected Seeds. Nevada was one I remember.

I tried to grow romaine "Vivian" this year in a container, but didn't succeed. Yes, the big garden seems like another lifetime ago.

We also had a lot of fruit: red and black raspberries, blueberries, currants, grapes, strawberries. I still have the trees now, of course: apples (McIntosh, Cortland, Winesap, Empire, Golden Delicious, King), plums, and pear. The peach tree (so delicious!!) split down the middle and died from being overloaded with fruit, and the cherries never did all that well. The birds liked them, though.

That was a trip down Memory Lane, wasn't it? You grew a lot! What fun.

My dad passed on the trick of planting marigolds around the tomato beds and we always had a healthy crop along with red and green peppers.

He swore that the marigolds were the trick!

Marigolds are supposed to keep the nematodes away.

I used to have a 1/4 acre garden, if you can call that a garden! LOL It's the size of my yard now. I canned and froze all manner of things, and even still have (as a souvenir, I'm never gonna eat it) a quart of blue lake green beans I canned way back then. I don't think I'll ever have another veggie garden. I'm about ready to give up gardening altogether and move into a trailer park or just sell my house and rent a room somewhere. Too old and sick and tired for this stuff anymore.

Wow, that is quite a garden! I went nuts the first couple of years we lived here. With 2.5 acres I had a huge garden and gave a lot away that I didn't can or freeze. I finally realized after a couple of years that we didn't need all that for 3 people.

So after 22 years I have scaled it down quite a bit and do a rotation of crops through out the year. I just plant small batches now, but do them every few weeks so have it all season rather than all at once. I have an all year garden out here in CA. Took me awhile to get a handle on that, was use to winters back East. And I don't can or freeze that much any more. I bought a dehydrator last year but haven't had enough to try it. LOL

Right now I have lettuce(3 kinds), swiss chard, kohlrabi, tomatoes (4 kinds), peppers, onions, winter & summer squash (6 kinds), parsley, chives, basil, mint. Soon to have beans, don't know why they took so long this year. I still keep a calendar gardner's journal of when I planted and how well things did.
Clare

Wow! That is gardening BIG-TIME!
We use to do a lot of gardening and the canning and freezing that goes along with it. It was nothing near your amount, but we sure enjoyed that fresh stuff.

Now, I get tired out going to the grocery store to buy veggies. My new thought is if I avoid that wonderful taste of REAL veggies, I will get use to and someday even enjoy the boughten stuff! LOL The trouble is, I still feel like I am working as hard as I did then.

I think we might be wearing down...

Thanks for the memories.

Oh my, that really is a vegetable garden. I'm exhausted just from reading your list and imaging how much work that was. Our gardens have all been rather small but we don't have the acerage at our home that you have at your farm. Do you know what the previous owners grew on your property? I'm hoping they cleared away all those rocks.

What did you do to keep the deer away? and the rabbits, and the gound hogs, possum, racoons and all those other little furry creaures that just love fresh vegetables. One of the reasons we planted 24 tomato plants this year was to make sure we would have enough tomatoes left after our creatures ate their share.

About the deer . . . We had the vegetable garden fenced. We did electric fencing for a while, then other kinds. It was a tall fence,and we thought we were doing an effective job of keeping the critters out. But one day my DD unexpectedly got home from school early and was locked out of the house. She sat quietly on the porch, reading, and after a while noticed rabbits springing over the fence. Boing! Boing! A bit later, a deer did the same.