Labor Day Harvest

It's only fitting that I should celebrate this Labor day weekend by doing absolutely no gardening work. It 's not by choice of course. The mosquitoes are merciless right now, attacking in threes and fours and even during the mid-day hours. I'm already looking forward to the second fall frost (which takes care of the mosquitoes that aren't killed by the first fall frost).

I don't know what I'm gonna do with all of this opo. There are about a foot long and weigh around three pounds each. If I had Asian neighbors, I'd gladly share as opo does not have a very long shelf life.


The slicing tomatoes have slowed down but the paste tomatoes are still going strong. We've met our tomato needs for the year so I'll have to find a home for these.


I picked the last two acorn squash and two more watermelons this week.


The Yellow Sunshine watermelon was picked about a week too early. I have one left in the garden. Hopefully I can get it perfect with the last one.


The last Blacktail Mountain watermelon was the best. If I had waited any longer, it would been overripe.


Our small patch of fall raspberries are producing well in the second year despite the fact that half of the canes had succumb to the raspberry cane borer. We are getting a little bowl full each day.


Finally, we also harvested a few fun things this week including some sunflower seeds...


...and some decorative Indian corn. I wonder if they can pop them.

Late August Harvest

A few weeks ago I was speculating that we might not have planted enough tomatoes this year. Well, let's just say that I'm not feeling that way now.


I'm happy to say that we've now preserved enough tomato sauce, puree(for soup) and salsa to get us through the next 12 months. Sure we weren't able to give away as many tomatoes as I would have liked but 20 plants seem to be the magic number for us. More than that just creates more unnecessary work and would waste valuable growing space.


Our peppers have done really well this year, particularly the Hungarian Wax. I've been roasting, peeling and freezing all of them. I have a lot of Jalapeno peppers that I think I'll let turn red and then make hot sauce.


Before this weekend's storm arrived, I pulled the rest of my soy beans.


We ended up with a good haul of pods, which has since been frozen. Edamame is a great snack for kids because the steamed beans are so fun to shell and eat.


I also picked two of our Blacktail Mountain watermelons and acorn squash. The squash vine was practically dead from borers and powdering mildew.


The first watermelon I picked was good.

The second one I picked was GREAT!

Acorn Squash

After a while of doing absolutely nothing, My acorn squash plants are taking off now. They haven't been producing any male flowers so I've been pollinating the females with pollen from my zucchini plants. I won't be able to save any seeds but at least we have squashes forming.

We're not huge winter squash eaters but I do like butternut squash soup. I'll have find a good recipe using acorn squash.