Wow, a week is a long time in the garden!

Remember when my pumpkins looked like this?

Well that was exactly one week ago...on July 13th. It's now seven days later, July 20th, and here are those same pumpkins...

Isn't that CRAZY!!!? WOW!!! Those babies really grow!!! I could swear that every evening when I'd go out and look at them they were bigger, and now I'm seeing it wasn't my imagination! Lol* I have counted a total of 6 pumpkins that have polinated and are growing. There may be more hidden in the vines that took over the bush beans, and into the corn, but I can't get to them! LOL* I'm not sure if these will grow to carving size but I really hope so. I also make a lot of pumpkin rolls and pumpkin pies in the fall for friends and family, and to earn some money to help fund Christmas...so I'm hoping to have enough for those too!

I covered myself up head to toe to pick bush beans that were buried in between pumpkin vines and corn this morning...I harvested this haul for my Mom & Dad...

There are still tons of small beans on the bushes too. I am amazed at how much food just a couple of packs of seeds produces. Just imagine if the rabbits hadn't found the carrots and eaten them to the ground! LOL*

I actually am beginning to think that over planting worked in my favor. The beans are surrounded by prickly pumpkin vines, and those seemed to keep the critters from finding and eating them up. I'm thinking by over planting the pumpkins I also may have helped to achieve a higher polination rate of female flowers...being as they were all crammed together there was I'm sure a lot of cross polination going on. I haven't seen any silks forming yet on the corn so we'll see if my gardening blunder helps or hinders those. Lol*

Here's some tomato plants already forming fruits that were 1/2 off at the garden center...being behind schedule has its perks! I am calling this my hillbilly tomato staking system...

(leftover bamboo stakes from some project I found in the shed, and twine.) Here's some peppers also half off...budding but no peppers yet.

Here's a shot of the entire overgrown veggie patch...vining and bushing out to the left are pumpkins, to the right, corn, and in front of the corn, sunflowers, and between the corn and pumpkins...carrots that were completely swallowed up and not visible at all (partially because of pumpkins, but the rabbits ate them before the pumpkins claimed the space as their own), and bush beans, which you can barely make out. There is a lot of space between the vines though, room to put my feet and dig around for beans.

Here's right next to it, an area I'm slowly working on throughout the summer for next year. This will be the add-on to the existing veggie patch. . Right now it's basically a giant compost heap getting ready for next years veggies. I'm sure my neighbors love that! LOL*

I'm really getting into gardening not only for fun, but for FOOD! It is absolutely nuts to me how much food this little bit of land has given me. My total cost for the entire veggie patch?

- Corn Seeds $1.00

- Pumpkin Seeds 33 cents

- Sunflower Seeds 33 cents

- Bush Beans $1.50

- Stakes and twine that I already had FREE

- Heirloom Tomato Plants 1/2 off - 90 cents

- Bell Pepper Plants 1/2 off - 90 cents

Total = $4.96

Total cost of plants that didn't make it = $1.00 (carrot seeds)

Ok so that doesn't include watering, but listen, we live on a budget, and believe me if I ran the water bill up my Husband would TELL me! It's literally an insignificant amount of water I've used. I've more or less relied on rain, and water every few days if there's been no rain. I reuse rain water that collects in random yard junk laying around! LOL* (I.E. - wagons, baby pool, any other pots or garden junk.) I've also been hang drying a lot of laundry on a line outside to conserve, so I guess things even out in that way too.