2009 was a great gardening year. While I did stop blogging (I blame schoolwork + normal work) at the end of July, I didn't stop gardening. Blogging is always the last of my priorities. I'd rather be gardening, harvesting, pickling, and eating!

But the rest of the gardening year was a success. I got tons of tomatoes and made nearly a dozen jars of sauce. We still have some in the freezer. I also made more pickles than ever, well over 50 jars. Everyone still loves them, so apparently I can never stop.

Once September rolled around, I made my first attempt on fall planting. I planted broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, and peas. All did well except for the peas - I think I planted them too late in the season. But I harvested 9 heads of cauliflower, 6 heads of broccoli, 8 heads of savoy cabbage, and nearly 3 gallons of lettuce in November. Yum! I still have some cabbage in the fridge!

I finally updated the image gallery with the remaining pictures I had from my garden. Some from August, and I still need to add a few from my final fall harvest. I'll do that real soon now...

But now with the new year begins planning the next veggie garden. I'm still using GrowVeg.com (http://www.growveg.com) for my planning. I'm actually a beta tester of the new version which has some great new features. So be sure to give their tool a try - it's very useful.

This year I plan to concentrate more on successive plantings, I hope to get a spring, summer, and fall harvest. I'm also thinking of recording the number of pounds of food I harvest this year. That won't be easy, and I haven't decided for sure, but it would be interesting to know how much food my garden actually generates.

That's it for now. I have many gardening catalogs to browse through and need to plan out the entire garden. Within a few months I'll begin - with the peas, spinach, and other cold spring crops. I can't wait!