Sunday, September 05, 2010

produce saturation level reached


Even after pulling up the bean plants and several squash vines, we are inundated with veggies. I have been taking a bag or two of produce to our town's food pantry, but it only is open once a week, too long for tomatoes to be sitting out. We picked all the ripe pumpkins in anticipation of Hurricane Earl, so of course we merely received 2 hours of rain, but despite almost no wind all my tomato plants fell over.


There are 8 more pumpkins in the patch yet to turn orange, rows of sweet corn that is almost ready, and over a hundred of green tomatoes in various stages of ripeness. We ate our first home grown cantaloupe and are checking the 5 still in the garden every day in hopes of harvesting another.

So far we have been very happy with our first year of gardening, next summer I want to plant more beans and put some up as well as can tomatoes and sauce. I'm going to try to start the melons inside and build a trellis to keep their undersides off the dirt/damp hay that allows them to rot before they ripen fully. 

Our favorite crop so far? Pumpkins, which grow almost as fast as kudzu and need tons of room (which we certainly have) are the hands-down winner, but the clear spines along the leaves and stem hurt like the dickens. Before we leave for Virginia, I must pull all the vines to compost and I will be sure to wear my work gloves. Ouch! 

2 comments:

Milehimama @ Mama Says said...

I'm canning tomatoes for the first time this weekend, but I didn't grow them, I bought them! We planted Godiva pumpkins, which mostly produce seeds but I won't harvest them until Thanksgiving, maybe. I love looking at productive gardens, it gives me hope! Thanks for posting pics!

Michelle said...

My mom used to cook her tomatoes and diced green peppers together and can that for spaghetti sauce. Eventually, she quit canning and would put the cooked sauce straight in the freezer (saved her time and energy - but then she couldn't give it away).

And she made the yummiest bread and butter pickles from her cucumbers. I'll have to ask her where she got the recipe. My little garden didn't produce nearly that much this year. Maybe next year...

Are you canning your pumpkin? That's an awful lot of pie!