Garden Surprises!

We have loved our garden this year and are enjoying the vegetables of our labors! We have had a few surprises this year in our garden. The first is pictured below, we did not thin out our carrots this year and this is what happened. This is several carrots all tangled together. It looks so cool! We did untangle them and then the kids devoured the deformed carrots. We have seen some other interesting carrots that are shaped oddly or are tangled but this one has been the neatest looking one, so far.

Next is our surprise vegetable that we never planted. After our carrots had come up we found this interesting looking plant in the middle of our row of carrots. It was definitely not a carrot and D thought that it was broccoli or cauliflower so we left it alone to see what it was. It was broccoli as you can see in the picture below. It was very big and beautiful. I cut it off and was so excited to cook it and eat it so I chopped it up and washed it really good and steamed it. Well, it was smelly, but broccoli usually is so I took a bite to try it out before serving it to my family. As I started chewing I realized that I had probably over cooked it but then I looked down into the bowl and there was an inch worm that had been steamed right along with the broccoli. Well, I quickly spit it out in the sink and showed the kids (they had been watching me). Gross! I looked through the broccoli and found another dead inch worm in it and threw it out. I guess that broccoli attracts a lot of bugs (and inch worms, apparently). I thought that I had washed it out so good, I don't think I will be planting broccoli ever again, well at least on purpose! :)

So there are our surprises from our garden, one good and cool, one not so good and really gross! We have really liked our garden. We have canned lots of beans, pickled lots of cucumbers, frozen some carrots, and will be freezing our corn soon. We also have eaten red potatoes and peas and LOTS of zucchini and crook neck squash and tomatoes from our garden. Thank you to those who have been willing to help me eat all of our squash and zucchini. I thought that I was tired of zucchini until I made stuffed zucchini for dinner last night and it was so delicious I can't wait to make it again. If you are interested in how I made it let me know and I will give you my secret recipe! :) I still am looking forward to canning peaches and pears and possibly making more applesauce, I am also looking forward to being done! Happy canning to everyone!!!