Vegetable Harvest With Some Little Helpers….

In my last post, I showed you how my vegetable garden had gone crazy growing a multitude of different vegetables.  I had the remainder of my winter vegetables ready to harvest as well as pull out.

So over the weekend, I put my kids to work helping me in the garden.

First off, I had to pull out our spinach and lettuce plants that we had enjoyed eating since last October.  You know, it is so hard to have to buy lettuce in the supermarket when I have gotten used to getting it from my own backyard 🙂

Old spinach growing in front of my garlic plants.

I love how easy it is to pull them out.

My winter vegetables

We collected all of the lettuce and spinach that we pulled and gave it to my mother for her compost pile.  It is really embarrassing that I do not compost, but I have plans to start.

Now for the fun part….my son Kai got in the garden and started to pull out our garlic.

It is harder than it looks, but he got it out.

Then it was my daughter, Ruthie’s turn.  I think this was our largest garlic.  

We were almost done, but my daughter Rachele pulled out the last few.

Now it was time to start pulling out the green onions.

You know what?  This is the absolutely the best part of having a vegetable garden – harvesting your vegetables and figuring out how you are going to prepare them.

I checked my cherry tomato plant and found some delicious tomatoes for our salad.

As we were harvesting our vegetables, my mother stopped by with some extra bush bean plants that she had left over after planting her vegetable garden, so now I had something to put in my newly bare areas.

It was a wonderful Saturday and I got to spend the afternoon with all of my kids, including my four daughters.

My youngest daughter, Gracie, tried to smile but couldn’t because she had 6 teeth pulled the day before and her mouth was a bit swollen.  By the way, she did great and is a real trooper.  Thank you for your thoughtful comments 🙂

Okay, so back to my vegetables.  I will let the garlic cure for 4 – 6 weeks in a cool, dark place before using.  Thankfully, my green onions are ready to use right now.  I think my homemade salsa sounds good right about now, don’t you? 

Noelle Johnson, aka, 'AZ Plant Lady' is a author, horticulturist, and landscape consultant who helps people learn how to create, grow, and maintain beautiful desert gardens that thrive in a hot, dry climate. She does this through her consulting services, her online class Desert Gardening 101, and her monthly membership club, Through the Garden Gate. As she likes to tell desert-dwellers, "Gardening in the desert isn't hard, but it is different."