The Vegetable Garden

In our previous house, a townhouse, I had a very small garden but still enjoyed growing some vegetables for our family. So when I saw that this house had a good sized garden, I was pretty excited.

I have to tell you, when we came to see the house for the first time...this garden was in ROUGH shape. The previous owner had planted a few things (tomatoes, kale, butternut squash, and pickle cucumbers) but, you know how it is, time gets away from you and the weeds just TAKE OVER. So, I borrowed my mom's tiller to get rid of all the intruders.

My mom used to absolutely rave over how awesome her tiller was, and I honestly just didn't understand...until I used it. Holy CRAP is that thing awesome. In what would've taken me HOURS by hand, I ripped through all the weeds in a matter of about 30-45 minutes. Not only that, but it helped me to form the hills for my fall crops.

Look at that thing rip through the soil.

After I tilled the ground, I added in a couple of bags of peat moss to help create a more fertile soil. 

Next, I planted a very small pumpkin patch. In reading up on fall gardens I learned that pumpkin patches are planted on mounds. Because the garden isn't huge, I only planted 1 mound of pumpkin seeds. If I calculated properly, I should hopefully have some pumpkins just in time for Halloween or Thanksgiving.

3 weeks later... o_O... I finally finished weeding the rest of the garden by hand. Those parts had plants too close together to allow the tiller to do the work for me. It is without further ado that I present the results.

Using the tiller, I was able to create these rows.

This is the beginnings of my son, Nolan's pumpkin patch. We just planted the seeds July 27, so we'll see if we've got some pumpkins by Halloween!

YUMMY butternut squash.

Beefsteak tomatoes. The plant is about finished producing, but it made enough to allow me to can some diced tomatoes.

And finally, some yummy yummy basil. I'll be making some homemade pesto with this for sure!

I'm looking at putting a few fall crops in soon. I live right in between zones 6 and 7, so it's about time to start planting. I've got carrots and I'm contemplating lettuce, although with the abundance of deer we have, I'm not sure that'd be the smartest thing to plant. Have y'all got any fall crop suggestions?