Sunday, September 20, 2009

Veggie garden update, September

It's been busy in the garden this past month, we enjoyed the veggies of our labor, some good and some not so good.

We have had our share of tomatoes, soooo lucky we are, I have yet to hear of anyone else in my area having any. Late blight killed alot of tomatoe crops this year and I can guarantee these will be expensive in the food stores come this winter.

We canned 4 more quarts of beans and on this day we were alittle anxious to test the other veggies, see the small carrots and onion?


And come time for the corn harvest.....


the raccoons beat me to it, somewhere is a well corn fed family of coons, they ate every one all the way around the cobs, well, they overlooked one 3 inch corn. Drats!
They even harassed my onions, trashing the one and only flower they had. I guess they didn't care for the flavor because all were intact, same with the zucchini which had a few claw marks in them.


We kept getting the devil tomatoes off one particular plant!? Try slicing the spawns of Satan or better yet, how do you peel this cuke? Very carefully.



The lettuce was constantly giving and even regrowing, they are a keeper.


More tomatoes.....



And since we were worried about the coons coming back, we pulled the carrots and onions. Both were somewhat smaller than normal but still tasty and there is enough carrots to can!




What to do...what to do...

Okay, we did fine with the zucchini but this is what we got for summer squash and maybe 3 winter squash, so they didn't do well.


Here's the plan, we kept these and canned the others.



It was interesting.


At the last minute we included fresh basil and oregano.



And 10 pints of carrots, which with my family, will last a good 8 months!



Everything looks delicious, matter a fact we used the carrots in a roast meal we had just last weekend. The green beans were to die for also!


The potatoes....ah...er, didn't do so well.
This is a bout 2 thirds of our harvest, out of 3 tires, 3 high. One meal. Say, la, vie.

More tomatoes, I hope it's not appearing as if I'm bragging because that's not the spirit of showing my harvest but really, we are eating tomatoes like apples. I think I might can again.

I clipped most of what was left of the herbs. If I leave these available maybe people will snack and run...!

This is about what my garden has left, half dead, half alive tomato plants with more tomatoes. No gourds //**\\ though.

Three quarter sized peppers and a few tiny cukes and we will be done.

Join my sister at In the Garden for more garden updates, it's on her sidebar.

Unless we do major winter prep for the soil, this maybe my last update until next year. C&G Design

9 comments:

tina said...

WOWSER! Send some of those veggies to me-all of them. Not the corn though-darned raccoons! It looks so good!!

Kathleen said...

You did do very well with the tomatoes...most folks had "blight" and lost them all. I am especially fond of the devil tomatoes. Those racoons...I call them "masked bandits" and with good reason. Hungry little theifs aren't they? I can't believe they did so much damage. It was 37 degrees here at 6:30 AM. Still no snow on Mt Katachdin. Hugs, Kathleen

Protector of Vintage said...

What a great harvest!! The only vegetables I planted this year were tomatoes and they are just starting to ripen. Too bad about the corn!!!!

CC said...

Wow.!!!! You did wonderfully well with our garden. You've made me want some good home grown tomatoes so bad..there is nothing so good as these straight from the garden. Yummmmmnn.

Debbie said...

OMG Dawn!! What a harvest!! I am so proud of your end of the garden feast! You are like a pioneer woman with all that canning...GREAT WORK! I am so jealous...we got the tomato blight and had none and I miss my tomatoes. We had a harvest dinner yesterday with all of the family that could make it. My kids helped me harvest the entire garden (mostly because we had a frost that killed all the plants the night before) and we got a lot of great things from the garden. The gourds this year were bumpy and warty...very halloweenish...a ton of carrots and beans and squash and pumpkins and sunflowers. I have pictures if I ever get back! The livingroom is finally done Dawn and boy do I have some stories to tell about that. Another week or week and a half. What we thought would take one month has taken two and heading towards 2 1/2!!! What a great thing gardening is and you are so great at creating storage for the winter. As far as potatoes go, I have never tried them but they grew for years next to me in the fields. The soil needs to be sandy I believe....also great for carrots. What you got for potatoes were beautiful though. I have made homemade minestrone, roasted veggies, marinara sauces, carrot cake and more with my veggies from the garden. I absolutely love this time of year! Great work my friend, and the lessons you are teaching your kids regarding gardening are priceless.

Rose said...

Wow, Dawn! What a bounty of vegetables! Your tomatoes look much like mine--even though they were hit by a late blight, too, I have been picking more than enough to preserve for the winter as well as eat fresh. Sorry about your sweet corn, though; I remember my father-in-law used to grow quite a bit of sweet corn, and he would put a radio in the field to scare off the raccoons. I'm not sure what kind of music they disliked, though:)

Don't give up on the potatoes and squash for next year; one thing I've learned from vegetable gardening is that you never know from year to year what will do well. This year's failure may be next year's success.

Corner Gardener Sue said...

I enjoyed your update. I need to find the time and energy to do some preserving of my harvest. I have lots of tomatoes, and need to get them chopped and frozen.

I can understand your frustration over the corn. I had a crop eaten by squirrels one year, and don't even try to grow it anymore. I have the room now, though, but there are lots of squirrels in the neighborhood, and they help themselves to the sunflower heads.

Jean Merriman said...

I am green with envy over the tomatoes. 16 of my plants were killed by blight and I had to pull and dispose of the other 4. Terri-Lynn came in one night after walking her dogs and said something has eaten 3 of the corn. She also said it was so cute as they left the empty cob. So I went out the next day to harvest it...ALL GONE!! I should have known enough to go out right then and there when she told me about the 3. Stupid me but I wanted to wait so Josh could go with me since he loves the corn so much and I really only grew it for him.

Skeeter said...

I would say you had a successful Garden there Dawn! I am wondering if the raccoon were the culprit or the “Children of the Corn” as your strange mater and zuke freak me out a bit. Yikes....

Happy eating this winter!