Soul Soil

We've been busier than usual. Spring came and we turned all our extra time and energy to the backyard. We spent hours and days working on prepping and expanding our garden. I wish I got before and after pictures! About half of our plants started from seedlings, the rest I just stuck some seeds in the ground and hoped for the best! Believe it or not, our plants from seeds directly sowed into the garden are bigger than the seedlings I transplanted! Maybe it was all the countless hours of tilling (by hand) and weeding. We cared the hell out of that soil. It's soul soil now. Since we did so well with sowing seeds in the garden, I decided to plant a second round of corn, black beans, green beans and carrots...hopefully we can get a later harvest out of the new little guys, just starting to poke their little seedlings out. I took inventory of our plants yesterday and was especially shocked by how many  sweet pepper plants we have! Here's what I counted:
35 Sweet Pepper
38 Corn
9 Squash (including green, yellow and only one spaghetti squash survived)
3 Cantelope
6 Tomato
2 Eggplant
1 Wax Bean ( I planted about 10)
25 Green Bean
12 Black Bean
20 Carrot
1 Cuke
3 Asparagus plants (We had such an early harvest of asparagus this year, it's just about finished!)

Garlic (countless! It's already been harvested!)

Strawberries
Blackberries
Blueberries
Thyme
Rosemary
Lemon Basil
Sweet Basil
Dill
Cilantro
We tried growing some greens...escarole, spinach and romaine but the heat wave said NO leaving our greens wilted, brown and dead. 
And an apple tree with no apples this year because of the late frost we got in spring. :(

Our biggest pepper so far! Yummy!

We have a bunch of these little guys

Got all nervous because I thought we planted some hot peppers, turns out they are sweet...SWEET!

Cantelope! I found out cantelope can grow up a trellis, so we are trying both. Some on the ground and rest is growing up and up!

Hang on little tomato

CORNHOLIO

Squash has taken over our garden, there are about 3 squashes almost ready on this plant alone

!

Blackberries! However, I should state that we did not plant the berries.

This is my first garden since I was a kid and I've never been prouder. I had no idea we would have such great results! We plan on freezing as much as possible come harvest time and hopefully live off our of organic fruits and veggies for a while. There is no reason why you shouldn't have a garden too! No matter what size, even a small window planter will give you some deliciousness and the best part is...you actually know where it came from! I noticed that majority of the peppers we buy are from Holland and Mexico. Who knows what they come in contact with before they end up on my plate. If I can do it, so can you. A pack of seeds can go for a quarter to 2 bucks, make it happen. Here's some inspiration for your garden, even if you are planning for next season.