I meant to post a blog post about our garden goings-on earlier in the year, but didn’t get to it, so here is a catchup blog post about the Lord’s provisions from the gardens from Spring and Summer so far this 2018!

Spring

In our last garden blog post, we mentioned we planted garlic last year:

Garlic Plants

Well, back in May it was harvest time! Thanks to the Stonger boys for the help!

Garlic Harvesting

Garlic Harvested

Time to dry them out for a couple of days, and then I hung them in the meat dryer to cure:

Hanging Garlic To Dry

Drying Garlic

And here are the final results, with those ready for next year, Lord willing, on the left, and the ones for use this year on the right!

Garlic Harvest Ready to Use

Then, it was to time for the main spring garden. It needed some weeding first, and thanks again to the Stonger boys:

Garden Weeding

And then we planted beans, squash, and spaghetti squash:

Bean Plants

Squash Plants

Spaghetti Squash Plants

And here they are about a month later:

Bean Plants Growing

Squash Plants Growing

Squash

More Squash

Spaghetti Squash Plants Growing

Spaghetti Squash

And here are some of the results!

First Squash 2018

Squash chips! Yum! (see recipe here):

Squash Chips

Here’s a freebee turnip plant from seed thrown down in previous years (more on this in the Summer part):

Freebee Turnip Plant

And then it was time to plant okra, which usually works very well around here:

Okra Sprouts

Here I tried throwing a bunch in rows, just to see how it worked:

Okra Sprouts

We also wanted to do sweet potatoes again this year after good success, thanks to God, from last year (see last garden update in the link above).

In fact, here’s a freebee from last year’s planting!

Freebee Sweet Potato

We tried to start our own slips, but they sadly just never grew:

Trying to Grow Sweet Potato Slips

And so we purchased some:

Sweet Potato Slips

And here’s the area we cleared and where they have gone:

Sweet Potato Cleared Planting Area

Summer

Sue got to processing the spaghetti squash by this time, and here are the results! Yum again!

Spaghetti Squash Fruit

She roasted some:

Spaghetti Squash Fruit Prepared for Roasting

Cut Spaghetti Squash Fruit

Roasted Spaghetti Squash

And made “pasta” from the “spaghetti”:

Spaghetti Squash Pasta

And here’s part of the squash haul, and them cut and preserved in apple cider vinegar:

Squash Harvest

Squash Preserved in Apple Cider Vinegar

Here’s the freebee turnip — nice!

Freebee Turnip

Thanks to inspector Mimi for allowing it to pass inspection! 😉

Mimi Inspecting the Turnip

Finally, here we are catching up to today. We’ve had a very hot spring and summer, and drought conditions, so some things are barely hanging on, although we do have rain percentages this week, during which we pray the Lord grants rain. But, here are the beans:

Bean Plants

Separated okra plant (many which got razed by something early on):

Okra Plants

And in rows:

Okra Plants in Rows

And okra fruit:

Okra Fruit

Here’s the freebee sweet potato from above:

Freebee Sweet Potato Plant

And another one that grew by itself:

Another Freebee Sweet Potato Plant

And the sweet potato bed:

Sweet Potato Bed

We are extremely grateful to the Lord for Him granting the provisions from the gardens this year so far, and we ask for those continued as He might will. We thank Him for the spots of rain He has provided to keep things going, and we always pray He grant spiritual rains of nourishment in our hearts so that we may thrive and grow spiritually for His glory in obedience to and more like Christ Jesus!

— David