The Garden of Neglect

Gardening is something I've always had a desire to do, but, for  multitudinous reasons, we were never very successful at it in Virginia. I'll blame it in equal parts on our hilly, shady backyard, the deer that frequented our front yard, and the five kids that kept me hopping.  In any case, we were very excited when we bought our house here in Utah, to discover that we would have a bunch of raised garden beds in our flat, sunny backyard, without us having to do anything to create them! 

Last year we were too absorbed by moving in and did nothing to maintain our gardens.  Much to our delight, though, we still got to  enjoy a few perennial items that just come back every year without expending effort.  We had plums, raspberries, eggs, and grapes.  

 Raspberries happen to be my favorite fruit in the universe and we were quite happy with our no-work garden yield, but definitely still daydreamed of bigger/better harvests in years to come.    

This year could have been the year, but things got a little derailed when our summer unexpectedly turned  out very differently than what we expected.    It wasn't until late-June/early-July {literally right before my Dad passed} before we finally planted anything.  As you might imagine, maintenance was minimal.  

Fast forward a few months of  zero weeding and the occasional watering, we're amazingly enough getting a harvest!   Apparently we planted the robust version of everything but the cucumbers and zucchini, which both withered and died shortly after planting.  Almost everything else is producing like crazy.  

This was our yield in just one day last week.    And we have lots more to come.   

We've made homemade tomato soup,

roasted veggie pasta sauce,

 fresh salsa, panzanella salad,

and Spence recently made us some delicious jalapeno poppers.   

That in addition to getting to put fresh tomatoes on everything and me eating the freshest tastiest raspberries around.

Was it as grand of a harvest as it could have been?  
Probably not. 
 
Will it be any better in future years?  
If I'm being honest, probably not. 

Have we thoroughly enjoyed fresh, organic produce right from our backyard! 
100%!

We are definitely calling the garden of 2022 a success and hope that future years will be as fruitful!    

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