Late Summer Garden and Eating Organic

We love having a family garden with easy to grow vegetables. The more we learn about the benefits of eating organic, the more we appreciate what we have. This article from Stonyfield sums up the “organic” discussion quite well. Even if the harvest is less than impressive (we live on a city lot, so we’re utilizing as much space as we can), the results are better for our bodies.

And also satisfying to our dinner guests!

Being late August, our garden is winding down, mainly producing squash and beans! And … it’s far from pretty.

It’s a busy season for us now that school and soccer have begun (hubby a soccer coach), and the garden often gets neglected.

Even though we try to keep up with the weeding, we don’t. But we do keep up with the harvest! Here’s our beautiful vast variety of tomatoes this year. It’s been a fantastic season for us. I’m not sure if these tomato cages helped, but we’ve been blessed with delicious almost perfect tomatoes.

We’ve already brought our straw in for next year.

Armenian cucumbers have never been so goods.I especially love using them in this Cucumber Salad with Pineapple and Cilantro.

New raspberries! It’s a novel thing to get raspberries this time of year in our area. Looking forward to potatoes – yay! Rainbow carrots – first year to grow. Cantaloupe is coming on! (We buy most of our garden tools from yard sales.)

Nectarine tree. A post to come on easy Nectarine Crisp using granola.

We’re planting a late crop of Buttercrunch lettuce and kale that we just bought from our local Grange.

Swiss chard is full and ready.

Tomatoes and zucchini are going in to pints of zucchini salsa.

Lots of zucchini and I love this quick salad with zucchini.

The extras go into the oven for Roasted Tomatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper, fresh basil and a little sugar. Then roasted and and served on whole wheat pasta.

As things begin to cool down, and it’s still dry, that is the time we get the garden ready for next year.

We plan to rebuild a few of the beds, change the dimensions, we’re considering replanting our strawberry bed and starting fresh next year (some plants have been here for 8 years), and our neighbors are redoing the fence.

We’re not out there weeding, taking care of it much. But late summer, a garden just happens on its own …

That’s what I love about this kind of gardening. As long as we’re enjoying the produce, there’s just no guilt. By the way, I’ve rarely seen a “perfect” garden. But the results of what we grow, and feeding organic vegetables and fruit to our family and friends, is so worth what we put into it.

Happy Labor Day weekend, friends!

Is your garden weeded and beautiful, or do you tend to “let it go” this time of year?