Jude’s corn is now over eight feet tall! Here’s a comparison from the beginning of June, July, and August.

The boys never disappoint when I ask them to tell me something new about their gardens. I usually learn something. For example, I didn’t know about the cats… Gross.

“I have a lot of green beans. Some are long and some are little. That’s it. My tomato is getting red and I’m saving it. It’s getting ready to eat.” (Morris)

“I have a good egg plant. We just made some pickles with my cucumbers. The cats have stopped pooping in my garden.” (Jude)

“My peppermint plant has vines all the way to the cucumber plant. My chili reds are getting red; my chili reds got eaten by something…” (Rex)

Jude’s cucumbers are hogging the vegetable drawer of our fridge and something needs to be done with them. So, we made refrigerator dill pickles!

I did the chopping. Jude did the filling and the pouring. Together, we made six jars of dill pickles. A few had carrots, green beans, and cauliflower were added for variety.

Here’s our recipe:

6 cucumbers speared

3 cups water

1 cup white vinegar

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon salt

2 garlic cloves, sliced

6 sprigs dill

Directions:

1. Fill jars with cucumbers, garlic, and dill.
2. Combine water, vinegar, sugar and salt in a pan over high heat. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat when salt and sugar dissolve.
3. Pour vinegar mixture over cucumber mixture.
4. Seal with a lid and refrigerate for at least one week. Keeps for 4 months.

We did it! Jude has already given one jar to Grandpa, and one jar is reserved for Mrs. Toby, his former first grade teacher.

Good job, Jude!

We’ve been curious about how much money a garden can make, or save a family. If we keep track of what we harvest, we’ll have a better understanding of whether we make our money back, and then what the value is for all that harvesting. We originally spent about $110 on plants and seeds.

Here’s what we’ve harvested so far, and the value we calculated. By the way, I’m having Jude add these up. Good practice for addition with decimals!

	Cost at Store	Harvested	Value
Cucumbers	$1.00	17	$17.00
Green beans	$2.69 / 1.35 lbs.	4.19 lbs.	$8.34
Tomatoes
-Roma	$.25 each	18	$4.50
-Cherry	$3.79 / 0.95 lbs.	65 / 1.5 lbs.	$3.80
-Big	$1.50 each	3	$4.50
Jalapenos/Chilies	$0.30 each	1	$0.30

Basil – $1.99/pkg. (fresh) —6– $11.94    

Chives – $2.99/.75 oz. (fresh) –None (Just nibbled in the garden)

Cilantro – $1.00/bunch (fresh)– 2– $2.00

Dill – $1.70/.58 oz. (dried)– 3– $5.10

*  TOTAL VALUE (as of 8/4)  = $57.48

*The herbs are winding down- except for the basil – so I did not add them to the chart. There are many tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans to come.

Today is a great day to harvest! There are many cherry tomatoes to pluck, two giant cucumbers need pulled because they threaten vine stability, and green beans are everywhere!

So, I sent my boys a-picking, and we had a bountiful harvest:

2 cucumbers

85 green beans

30 cherry tomatoes

8 roma tomatoes

Great growing, Boys!

Sooo…with so many cucumbers, I thought the boys might like to make cucumber salad, a classic summer salad. Rex and Jude wanted to slice their own cucumbers and take some credit for it as we were taking it to an aunt and uncle’s for supper AND it’s one of their grandpa’s favorite.

We used the following recipe:

4 cucumbers thinly sliced

1 small onion thinly sliced (or 4 tiny ones, in our case)

1 cup white vinegar

½ cup water

¾ cup white sugar

1 tbsp dill

1 tbsp pepper

2 very careful boys (who have never used sharp knives before)

1 very calm mother (who has never let her boys use sharp knives before)

They did it (without any fingers sliced!)! It was delicious! And Rex was especially proud as his grandfather oohed and aahed and said it was one of the best cucumber salads he’s ever had.