Good bye 2015 garden....

Between the month of rain, the Japanese Beetle invasion, an apparent bunny infestation, and the 90+ temps in September...the garden was pretty disappointing this year.  My organic pest control worked when I did it well--insecticidal soap and cayenne pepper are just a couple of my methods--but I wasn't very good at keeping up.  I'm a lousy homesteader, what can I say.  We had a few tomatoes, some beans and peas (not enough for a meal), a few cucumbers (not enough to pickle, just enough for eating) and some peppers--oh and two okra.  We may still have a few more tomatoes and peppers, but it looks like everything else is done (as evidenced by the dying vines and plants).  Here's the final "big" harvest.

Notice that the oddly shaped carrots are as big as the butternut squash.  Sigh.  There are a few more carrots out there, too, I'm leaving them for now. There are a few onions and two sad little tomatoes there...  Mr. IM posted a slightly different view of the carrot on Facebook with a slightly obscene label.  Men.  The good news for the carrots and onions was that they became part of the yummy veggie gravy that went with our pot roast on Sunday.  (Now that's a recipe I should share--it is one of the Mister's specialties!)

Now here is the success story of the summer, ironically.  You may remember the previous "potatoes in a bucket" projects.  (See here, here,  and here).  Partially due to the rain, I didn't start the potatoes when I should have.  Sometime in June, I cleaned the refrigerator---like take out all the drawers and shelves and scrub every surface cleaned--and found...wait for it...two little potatoes growing legs.  So I chopped them up, threw them in a plate of water overnight and threw them in some dirt.  I did add more dirt a couple times., but nothing else. Over the weekend I realized all the potato stems were dead, so I dumped them out, expecting, well, nothing, like the past two years...but...surprise--from my two pieces of potato I harvested 4-6 reasonably sized potatoes and a bunch of little ones.  Hmm.  This is an idea for next summer perhaps.