A Little Garden Recap

It's about time to make it up to you all and post some pictures and stories about the garden.  The weather around here is still fantastic, 60's and 70's during the day and cool at night, and though there's a threat of frost Saturday morning, it shouldn't be too bad.  The zucchini are done, but the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants all still look good and are going strong. 

This was a learning year for us and some things worked: all tomatoes, especially the wild Mexican cherry tomatoes, potatoes, and zucchini.  Some things didn't work as well: peppers (just starting to produce now that weather has turned slightly cooler) and eggplant (I think they got crowded out from being planted near the tomatoes).  We'll continue learning, making improvements and trying out new veggies.

 

This was the main bed of tomatoes.  The word "unruly" cannot even begin to describe the tangled mass of tomato-ness.  I was out of town for some of their formative weeks, and they missed out on some of the necessary staking/trimming required to be organized members of a polite garden society.  Despite lacking that structure they still produced prolifically.

 

This was the first tomato harvest in mid-August, grape and cherry tomatoes.

This was two days later, cherry tomatoes and beefsteaks tomatoes along with a few eggplants. 

This was the very next day.  We got a ton of tomatoes, Alycia had the food dehydrator running  24/7 for several weeks and we have a ton of sun dried tomatoes for use all winter.  They make a delicious addition to soups, stews, chili, and on top of pizza.  The bigger tomatoes were either eaten right away or transformed into delicious pasta sauce. 

The zucchini plants were indeed prolific and we got more than we needed from just two plants (there are indeed two plants right next to each other), but unlike others who find themselves cursed with too many long green squash, we saved ours with the help of the food dehydrator.  Cut into circles and sprinkled with a bit of the sultry mistress of spice, Mrs. Dash - viola! we had zucchini chips, quite tasty and probably a healthy replacement for potato chips (which we never really eat anyways). 

For the next few weeks we'll try to keep the tomatoes and peppers warm (in case it freezes) and slowly producing more goodness.  I'll make another raised bed or two for next year and we've already taken some of the excess strawberry runners, grown new offspring plants and transplanted them around the blueberries.  We're also going to mulch over more of the lawn area in the garden, in and around the apple trees (I"ll take some pictures of this later - don't worry) so that next year we have more room for large spreading veggies like squash, cucumbers, and pumpkins.