For those of us who live in Southern Oklahoma or North Texas and consider ourselves full-time "Texomans" it's the end of another year of gardening at Lake Texoma.

Most of us were too busy gardening and putting up the harvest throughout the season to do much blogging about it, so here's a little summary of our gardening adventures. Please comment and post photos of your gardening this year, too!

Spring found us harvesting mustard greens, collards, kale and swiss chard.  I rinse them (usually in the bathtub because there is too much to fit the kitchen sink) and steam blanch them briefly, then freeze in little packets for quick use in soup and casseroles all winter. Same with fresh green beans.

Yellow crookneck squash and zuchinni came on next, and filled the plastic tubs that make for easy harvesting, tossing them in as we move down each row. This year I froze some in quart bags, after harvesting and cooking both kinds of summer squash together. And I also cooked up big batches of tomatoes, summer squash and herbs from my little strip garden by the driveway, including parsley, rosemary, oregano, cinnamon basil and pineapple sage. After cooling, I ladled it into pint containers and froze it for soup.

And then the tomatoes, peppers and okra ripened and demanded attention. We experimented with a weird (that's what my husband says) variety of tomatoes this year - a few heritage varieties of purchased plants, roma tomatoes we started from seed in our mini-greenhouse, and most exciting to me, the new variety that's super-nutritional called Indigo Rose. It appears very dark in the photo below, almost black, but it's actually purple and green as it's ripening, and then purple and orange-red when fully ripe.

We also experimented with a variety of peppers this year, too. Anaheim, Jalapeno (including one variety that's not very hot, called Surprise Jalapeno), Serrano, Green Bell, Yellow Bell and the weirdest of all - Chilhuacle Negro, a rare and delicious, deep purple/black, bell-shaped pepper that's medium hot and makes DELICIOUS enchilada sauce. Oh yes, we make our own at home!

You'll see my photos of dehydrated peppers and then the ground-up mixture after putting the dehydrated pepper mix through the blender. I call it Pepper Palooza, and it's perfect for sprinking on pizza and adding to homemade salad dressings.

OK, your turn!  Tell us and show us what you grew in your Texoma garden this year by posting below.