Vegetable Garden

Who's got one ? what are you growing ? and how's it coming along? Mine consists of sweet corn , cabbage , brussel sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli ,cucumbers, zucchini, peas, tomatoes , peppers , acorn squash, pumpkins, and assorted spices. The cold wet weather hasn't been very conducive to good growth so far for me. But with warmer weather in the forecast things should turn out. I hope those of you growing fair better.

Pool 8 I use that same one.  Love it!

Vegetable strainer works great.

Started sauce. 

I don't even know where to begin with updates, it's been awhile. We are just trying to stay afloat. It's a bumper crop year across the board, all that early rain and dry summer really kept the wilt and fungal diseases down. Things just continue to thrive. Our freezer is full, we got another one because things aren't slowing down any time soon. I'd guess I've harvested around 75# of carrots and if that is 1/5 of what I have planted I would be surprised. Tomatoes we are keeping up on by making a big batch weekly, use enough for a meal that night and then freeze or can the rest. Have probably 10 quarts of sauce currently. Still have 3 more rows of corn to ripen, we haven't froze any yet so that's the goal with that. 
Just picking away day by day! Chickens now have free access to the garden prepping for next season, so cukes, zucchini, things like that will get pecked apart going forward. Still getting broccoli regularly and peppers just started picking up in the last 2 weeks. 

Beans, finally!!!  Bush beans, planted almost a month later than the pole beans are almost ready to pick.  Quite a few on the vines too! The pole beans are now producing quite a few, which is great.  I now prefer the pole beans over bush beans cause I don't have to bend over to pick them!  Key to picking most pole beans though is to pick them before they mature.  They get pretty woody and stringy if you wait to pick them.  But you get WAY more beans off them!  Last pic, my cucumbers.  Still getting a few and there are still flowers but it's slowing down.  That's alright far as I'm concerned for pickling.  But I'd still love to get an eater or two a day as long as I can.

Must have really poured last night. I checked the rain gauge and had about an inch. The radishes that I planted 2 weeks ago were flattened out. They should come back when it dries out.

While I was fixing my house from the tree falling into my bedroom my tomatoe plants grew through the upper section of wire mesh, so they didn't get as tall as they could have. 
I caught two chipmunks in the rat traps and stopped finding half eaten tomatoes, so I think it was them.

Loving these cattle panel trellis's

Not hard to believe, that's great! 

It's been nice growing tomatoes without a raised bed for so many years, but If I'm to continue, it has to be raised. Losing a battle to this Walnut tree. The drainage is my biggest issue with that. Away from home a lot and they tend to dry a heck of a lot faster. Maybe a catchment with a drip system or something. 

Where there's a will, there's a way.

Sounds unbelievable, but so far with only  three tomato plants ( jet star tomato's ),  I have picked 154 tomato's. Been giving most away to friends  that wants some.  There is still some more to go.
Back on August 12th, I posted a picture of one of the plants. 
In all my years of planting tomato's, I have never seen such high yields. 

Last picking from Sunday

Purple Magic news  

Slowly, but surely tomatoes and now that I'm reflecting on last night, plenty of peppers for all kinds of shtuff. 

Cukes, just fine btw, but dwindling much sooner than most years. Like I said, it's been strange with an abundance of water. Just when we had a good system going

Well, on the plus side, big slicing tomatoes are in no hurry to ripen here. They're coming in at a nice, slow, steady pace. We've had several BLTs and a steady supply of fresh salsa, but no rush to can yet. I would have zero problems if that continues. Box Cars and Rutgers are ahead of the early ones?? I dunno, we're not in drought here in the far corner and it's been weird for everything. 

The cherry and grape tomatoes are a different story, a whole lot, really fast! Solved that today revolving sheet pans through the oven...first, was four pans of both cherry and grapes tossed in olive oil and fresh garlic. Those will be used for hot/cold pasta/salads, salsa roja, bruschetta, etc. Next was 2 more with garlic, onion, and peppers for fresh salad dressing. Looking at some now and thinking we're just gonna eat em. 😆 

Peppers, that was the very 1st thing I did today after breakfast, pickled 2 pints of Hungarian wax rings and started a ferment on a quart of hot sauce. Peppers are doing quite well in general. Didn't plant as many as usual. I'll plug in the dehydrator soon to grind down and replenish one of our favorite seasoning blends and hopefully there's more for hot sauce, salsa, etc. If not, I won't cry.

Bush beans, pleasantly surprised today! Transplanted 3 more plants after this 3rd picking of secondary plants. Dinner in the next few and 1Q dilly beans for fall camp.

Shishitos tomorrow, wish Id been around a bit sooner, ah well

Skilz, absolute chaos is right.  

I planted too many tomatoes so the plants don't look well but they are producing a lot. San marzannos are loaded. Just waiting for them to ripen. ​

Yesterday I planted green beans, lettuce, carrots and radishes. Forcast looked like we would get enough to get the ground wet. About 4:45 this morning thunder lightning  and pouring rain. Ended up with 1"7/10". Garden was dry as a bone yesterday and today was soaked. Susposed to get more rain tonight.