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!