Our summer garden

Our garden is having its best year yet. We came back from our summer holiday to find everything looking lush and overgrown, including the lawns.

I quickly mowed the lawns and moved the chicken coop, and then got to harvesting anything edible.

Finding actual cucumbers growing amongst the sprawling green felt like a miracle to me. I've never been successful growing them before, and we eat a lot of them, so this was a huge win. We've got cucumbers coming out our ears now, which is a good problem to have.

Another vegetable we love to eat is tomatoes. Paul and I enjoy them on toast (with fresh basil from the garden) and the kids love popping cherry tomatoes in their mouths any time of day or night. In this year's garden I've got two cherry tomato plants, two slicing tomatoes and one Roma tomato (which was self-sown.) We're getting a handful each day, enough to keep us going.

I'm still waiting on my potatoes and courgettes/zucchinis to be ready to harvest, and I did have numerous self-sown pumpkin plants, but I pulled them out because I didn't have the space for them with all the other things I'm trying to grow.

Since I spent our entire month's grocery budget when we were on holiday, I've been trying to make the most of all this garden plenty so I can stretch what we already have in the pantry and freezer and spend as little as possible on groceries.

We ate Pad Thai for dinner one night, which featured homegrown carrots and spring onions, as well as eggs from our own chicken; I took a salad to a family dinner which was made with my own lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and basil; We've lunched on homemade buns topped with salad fixings from my garden; And the kids have snacked on homegrown plums, strawberries and vegetables for afternoon tea.

We've also got nectarines and plums setting on the tree right now, and I'm looking forward to eating those with the kids.

We are literally enjoying the fruits of my labour and I couldn't be more grateful.