The Growing Season Wanes

Well, all of my hard work in the Spring paid off with another rewarding harvest. It's been a great year for Roma and cherry tomatoes and peppers of all kinds. I had no luck with corn and slicing cucumbers (again), but did finally win in the cuke category with pickling cukes. Oh - and I have 2 - count them 2! - pumpkins growing!! Woohoo! I shall have my own homegrown jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. Awesome!

Yesterday I got out into the garden for a bit. I cut down the sunflowers. My dreams of lots of roasted sunflower seeds were dashed a couple of weeks ago when I squirrel darted down my largest sunflower one afternoon when I let the dogs out. I inspected the sunflowers to find that all of the seeds were basically gone! Darn squirrel! After I reported my finding Dave tells me about a day earlier in the week when he saw the squirrel just lounging on the fence, monorail style, with legs draped over the side as if in a stupor. I guess he gorged himself on sunflowers and was taking a rest. Sigh...I did find that my smallest sunflower still has seeds because it has grown in such a way that the squirrel cannot reach them. Yippee! That one will stay in the ground a bit longer to let the seeds mature some more.

My second task yesterday was to harvest more tomatoes. The Romas are STILL going crazy. I must have harvested 10 pounds of tomatoes yesterday. I really need to learn how to make some home made spaghetti sauce. :)

I think in another week or so I'll take the pepper plants down. They are still producing but the peppers are starting to grow deformed, which always seems to happen at the end of the plant's life. I guess we all get deformed as we get older. ;) Once I get the pumpkins harvested I'll be able to clean those beds out and get some new compost in them for the Fall/Winter.

Can't believe it's the middle of September already! The first day of Fall will be in a few days. Crazy how quickly another growing season passes.

I'll Be Back Soon - I Promise!

As you are well aware, I haven't been blogging about the garden much lately. There are several things contributing to this: the discovery of Facebook (a major time suck), working too hard (another major time suck), being plain ole tired, and there's nothing really going on - just waiting for things to grow!

I harvested enough tomatoes to feed a small army today. My pepper plants are producing like crazy although the red ones never turn red so we just eat them green. Still great! Last week we made stuffed green peppers from our homegrown harvest. Yummy! I'll have to share the recipe in a future post. Today I also noticed that the corn I didn't think was going to produce has now formed ears. I harvested 2 ears that we are about to eat. Can't wait! I also harvested 3 cucumbers!! Yes - cucumbers!! The veggie I've never had any luck with. These are pickling cukes so I'm going to try to make some homemade dill pickles next weekend.

This week I'm off to a residential training program for work so I'll have to share photos, recipes and more when I return.

Happy growing!

Attack of the Japanese Beetles

Wow - no posts for a while! Sorry about that. Between going to Vegas for The Amazing Meeting 7 (which was AWESOME!), working 12 hour days, and then getting sick on top of it all, I haven't been able to get in the garden much. I went out yesterday and noticed I have lost one green bean plant to Japanese beetles. The buggers have totally skeletonized all the leaves on one plant and are working on the others. They are all over the place! I've never had a problem with Japanese beetles before, so this is disappointing. Today I sent Dave out to pick off what he could and drop them in soapy water. This is the best organic approach but definitely not the most efficient. I'm not sure if any pesticide exists to destroy them and, even if there is something, I'd have to spray constantly. So, it's a battle of me against the bugs.

On the plus side, we're getting TONS of tomatoes and green peppers. I have at least 2 green peppers large enough to make stuffed peppers. Need to look up a recipe and give that a whirl. The corn and sunflowers appear to be doing well. It looks like I may have some success with cucumbers this year, too (but I'm not entirely convinced yet). I did see a bumblebee on my cucumber plant yesterday so that was exciting. Means I have some natural pollination occurring!

Well, I need to get myself outside. It's a beautiful day but nothing has been watered since the last thunderstorm came through. The plants in pots are looking pretty sad and, despite how I feel, I still need to get out there and at least get stuff watered.

Toodles!

Triumph and Tragedy Gardening Style

I harvested the first tomato of the season the other day (did I already tell you this?). This is a first for me - first tomato BEFORE 4th of July. I got my tomato plants in the ground earlier this year and it seems to have paid off. In my excitement I forgot to take a photo commemorating this feat of gardening. Dave and I ate it in a salad the other night. It was quite tasty! Now there are lots of little red grape tomatoes on the vine. I'll have to point those out to Dave as he loves grape tomatoes (I have issues with biting into them...that discussion is for another blog).

So, what's the tragedy amongst this triumph? Dave pointed out to me that I forgot to put the nozzle back up on one of the rain barrels. Of course, it was the nozzle that leaks. The entire rain barrel drained overnight. :( So, I'm torn about the 4th of July weather forecast. The forecasters are predicting storms. Yay for filling the rain barrels but it will ruin the 4th of July fireworks and I do like a good fireworks display. Even if Mother Nature were to provide a nice one in terms of lightening and thunder, I'd still miss the man-made variety.