Finishing Up the Garden Tour

I know everyone can grow zucchini so it's nothing to brag about, but I think my two plants (in the same hill) are especially pretty this year. Maybe it's all the blossoms still putting on a show that impress me.

We've been eating them sliced and sauteed with onions and mushrooms with an egg on top for breakfast most every morning for a while now. Yum!

Here's my bed of slicing cucs. I thinned the bed down to four plants. Then two up and died on me before bearing fruit. They just withered and started to turn brown. I inspected them for insect damage but couldn't find any. The two remaining plants are producing about 55 pounds of slicing cucs a day. (Okay, maybe a little less than that.) I took ten cucs to a get together yesterday and wouldn't let anyone leave without taking at least one. They are soooo good and we eat a lot of them either cut into spears with a little salt or sliced and mixed with red onion, garlic salt, black pepper, dill weed and a smidge of mayo. We always miss them when the frost zaps the vines.

I planted three kinds of peppers in this bed and there was a time earlier this season when I didn't think any of them would get over 6" tall. But they did.

This is a sweet pepper, Antohi Romanian, an Eastern European frying pepper. They've always done really well for me yielding heavily. They are yellow turning both orange and bright red, but you can harvest them in the early yellow stage. You can't see them all but this plant has ten peppers on it.

We've never been much for hot, spicy foods but I know they are reputed to be good for us so for the first time this year, I've grown Cheyenne, a "warm" hot pepper which can be used when green, as they are now, or when they turn red. I've yet to harvest one to give it a try. (Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy. No kidding, I'm really afraid of them. I mean I'm supposed to wear protective goggles and gloves when I prepare them??)

I have serious doubt that these jack o' lantern pumpkins will make it this year. This is our largest one, about the size of a soccer ball. (Oh well, there's always orange spray paint.)

Unless we have an early killing frost, I think my Red Kuri squash will mature. This one shown here grows visibly bigger each day. Really.

How many green and yellow beans can two people eat? Like the peppers, my bean plants started so slowly this year, but have ended up giving us a bumper crop. I don't think I've ever had such a good crop of beans.

The green and red cabbage are huge, but a bit beat up by munching insects. They've been hard hit by critter damage this year and I've yet to harvest one to see if they are usable. I really must do that soon.

That's an overview of most of what's happening in the garden right now. Fall plantings are growing under shade cloth and I'm hoping they will give us fresh green goodness well into fall. I'll take the shade cloth off at some point and put cold frames on top of them to extend the season as much as I can.

Gardening a hard work, but I do so love doing it. This time of year I feel like a squirrel (or perhaps a big, ol' bear getting ready for hibernation) taking in the bountiful harvest and packing it away for the winter. What a great pay-off for your own labor!