tomatoes!

We finished pulling out our tomato plants yesterday :( The tomato blight has been devastating in our area this year. I've had a few tomatoes to enjoy that we picked green and let ripen, but if they were picked after the blight got to the plant they just turn black before ripening.
The glads have been gorgeous this year - I've been enjoying them cut in bouquets for the house and honey house.
My pie pumpkins are all starting to turn orange, so hopefully I'll have some to freeze.
The shell beans, black turtle, aren't looking too healthy but I'll wait for them to dry and hopefully have a few for the winter.
Yesterday I canned some summer squash (an experiment) and some dilly beans. The day before I made a batch of sweet relish, hopefully I'll get enough cukes to make some dill relish too.
The corn is DELISH this year, at least the honey select is - it was the first to ripen. The peaches are starting to ripen and we should have about a bushel of them sometime this week. Between the deer and the rain we'll have zero shiro plums.

august garden notes

The garden hasn't gotten all of the attention that it needs the last couple of weeks, but it continues to grow - especially the weeds. It seems like I pull a 5 gallon bucket full of weeds and three times as many grow, if only the veggies grew so well! This year has been a battle with the weather and pests. Zip counted 27 blue jays in the blueberries this morning - it's no wonder that we've only gotten about 5 quarts this year! This past week we've harvested more than enough zucchini and summer squash (I wish there was some way to preserve the squash). We're also getting lots of fresh cucumbers to eat, but not enough to pickle or relish :( I'm still picking green beans, we picked about 19 lbs. this week - I've canned 65 pints of beans this year. Of course we're still digging potatoes and I've pulled some of the onions. The texas sweet onions are huge delicious things!
We've pulled the first planting of peas, but the second, smaller planting is just getting started at the honey house. I picked 9 oz. (shelled wt.) of those yesterday. I've lost track of the amount of broccoli that we've gotten so far.
Our tomatoes aren't looking too good right now. I think that we may have the tomato blight - in the last three days we've started to develop a lot of yellow leaves. There's lots of tomatoes on the vines, so if I have to I'll pick them green and let them ripen on the back porch.
The flowers are blooming nicely in the garden. We have glads, sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos and dahlias.