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Pickle Palace and Planning for Next Year

August 18th, 2025 at 11:50 pm

Hummingbird Hills has become pickle palace! Our two cucumber plants have gone wild and besides eating them now, I have made sweet pickles, bread and butter pickles, dill pickles, and sweet relish. My pantry is filling up and hopefully there is enough to share during the holidays with family. 

DH and I have already had serious talks about the garden for next year. We started a compost pile, but it won't be ready for when we tear up the garden and pull the plants. We don't think we want to plant much more, but would like ot make the garden a little bigger just for ease of getting around it. 

I had hoped to get enough tomatoes to can a few jars, but not sure if that is going to happen. At least we are getting fresh tomatoes. We've had extreme heat and little rain, so it's been a hot job watering and even if the plants want water, those pesky weeds can grow no matter what. 

We picked our second watermelon. The first one was around 27 pounds. I think this one is close. 

We planted sunflowers at the end of May and they didn't come up so I planted some in July just to see if the seeds were bad. I planted them in a different place and they all came up. I'm hoping we get some nice blooms before it gets cold so I can harvest the seeds for next year. 

One of the goals this year was to plant more butterfly and hummingbird friendly flowers. I hope that worked and my observation skills are spot on. I've seen more butterflies this year than last year and we have a couple of hummingbirds who seem to be visiting frequently. 

We have been eating a lot of stuff from the garden which means we aren't buying as much at the grocery store. That has helped with the grocery budget. 

Posted in Food / Groceries, Saving Money, Shopping, Ramblings and nonsensical chatter | 4 Comments »

4 Responses to “Pickle Palace and Planning for Next Year”

  1. LivingAlmostLarge Says:
    August 19th, 2025 at 08:22 am 1755588135
    1755588135

    Sounds so pretty and lovely. Can't wait for photos?

  2. Tabs Says:
    August 20th, 2025 at 12:46 pm 1755690370
    1755690370

    You grow 20+ pound watermelons?!

  3. rob62521 Says:
    August 20th, 2025 at 05:08 pm 1755706114
    1755706114

    LivingAlmostLarge, I wish I could include photos, but I've tried every which way and I get an error message.

    Tabs, you are about as surprised as I am about the size of the watermelons!

  4. LifeBalance Says:
    September 3rd, 2025 at 05:53 pm 1756918411
    1756918411

    That's awesome. I may try growing cucumbers next year. I am so done with tomatoes - we're up to our eyeballs in them. The plants took off, growing up and over (and over) the raised bed so we mow around the 'tomato jungle'. Most of them are cherry tomatoes and the plants make so many of them. DS3 stopped by for a surprise visit today and picked an entire bowl of them, tossed them with olive oil and cooked them, then ate them all. It did my heart good since I feel so many are going to waste.

    I think the secret for me is to have only one plant of each vegetable type. I have only one bell pepper plant and we can keep up with that one.

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