The Start of Garden Harvesting

This is pretty much the main reason I wanted to start a garden. ;)

I pulled these things from my garden one day last week...

...added a little red onion, cilantro and lime...

chopped it all up and made this:

Salsa, baby! Salsa!

Seriously. When I planted, my goal was to have everything I needed to make salsa (except for the lime, of course) all summer, whenever we wanted. My amateur thinking wasn't taking into account that it wouldn't really be ALL summer since the stuff isn't even ready until August. Duh. Haha! Well, my cilantro failed immediately and I've been leaning on the CSA bags for my red onion. So now I'm just stocking our fridge with cilantro and lime each week and we're going to be eating salsa A LOT the next couple months. :) Happiness.

Another bonus of the garden is the sheer appeal of pulling actual food out of it and eating it right then and there. In the past, whenever I've put raw green beans on Sophie's plate for meals, she'd never touch them. We still haven't made any progress with getting her to eat tomatoes this summer, but green beans picked fresh are obviously a novelty 'cause she munches and crunches away, right along side her brother.

Several times now, we've taken a quart container out in the evening and pulled a handful of beans and the kids just sit and eat them while I make dinner. Some days there's nothing to pick (especially because our orange, grape tomato plant has taken over all the space on the side where the beans and cucumbers are and the beans seem to be suffering from it) but most days we get a little something. That's going to increase drastically pretty soon.

They were fighting over who was going to hold the cucumber for the picture this day. :) You can see Will's expression reflecting that. (P.S. You can also see my herbs to the left of Sophie.)

Will agreed to let Sophie hold it if he could take the picture. :)

Also this day, we got a couple of tomatoes with our beans and cucumber.

Watering another day. I usually just use the hose. The kids like to use the watering can a lot.

Another couple tomatoes.

Crunching more green beans.

Trying to turn on the hose.

I've got a better idea of how I'll do things different next year, but all in all it has been a great first experience with vegetable gardening.