Lots and lots of stuff out of the garden today! Many Roma tomatoes, a few Amana Orange tomatoes, a large Marvel Striped tomato… more tomatoes… cucumbers, beets, and carrots (I didn’t take a picture of them).

We ate two of our black eggplants for dinner last night. The one here is a pink bi-colored eggplant. The random yellow/green squash was weighing down the vine, and when I picked the vine up this morning, it just fell right off. So, I guess it’s time to be eaten! It’s not very big and the vine only made one, which is slightly upsetting.

We ripped a big chunk of the beans out of the garden this afternoon, and Chris has been busy planting vegetables for late fall/winter harvesting. Maybe he will write about what he’s been planting soon!

Two!

Finally, finally, finally! We turned our backs on the garden for a couple of days, and this morning found at least three Small Sugar Pumpkins, finally starting to grow! I think the hot weather and lack of rain really halted the production of female flowers. We got another half-inch of rain this week, so things are looking up.

The nights are getting much cooler – I’m going to start bringing my papayas inside for the evenings very soon. We may also need to think of a system for our potted eggplants to extend their growing season a bit. The first frost is still (hopefully) at least a month away, but given the late appearance of everything this year, I hope we’ll hold onto the sunshine just a bit longer!

Here’s a mini photo-tribute to our many kinds of heirloom tomatoes, which are finally starting to ripen.

Marvel Striped Tomato These are pretty delicious, but there are very few of them and their shape renders them useless as a slicing tomato. The few that we’ve picked also had some black infected areas around the top. They take a long time to ripen – from green to yellow to red.

Oaxacan Pink Tomato Definitely a keeper for next year. Heirloom tomatoes produce an incredible variety of different sized and shaped tomatoes on the same vine. Here you can see a crazy lumpy tomato (I read that this is caused by a defect in the flower) growing right next to a nice round tomato. These two are fairly large – we’ve been pulling the Oxacan Pink tomatoes from the vines in the front yard for a month now. The pink tomatoes in the front have, for the most part, been small (nearly cherry-sized) and round.

Amana Orange Tomato Again, a definite keeper for next year! These ones are finally starting to ripen, and we have 6 or 8 of them waiting to be picked. They’re rather large, and not too juicy – a perfect slicing tomato for a veggie burger or sandwich! (Again, another funky-looking one above!)

Prize of the Trails Cherry Tomato These dark orange cherries are delicious… but they’re really too big to just pop into your mouth!

We also have Early Red Tomatoes (which, by the way, were not “early” at all) and Roma Tomatoes – they’re both starting to produce a lot, but the pictures aren’t as exciting as these ones.

Those are the new bulls blood beet sprouts. Not much else I planted recently has sprouted yet…the beets we planted in the spring are still a little on the small side, but they taste fine. We have some in the fridge I have been meaning to turn into juice along with a carrot or two.

This is our weekly food share from easy bean farm. Theres leeks, peppers, tomatos, cabbage, etc. The plan is to someday soon grow this much for ourselves every week (sorry easy bean!).

Aahh… the weekend is… over? Ugh. Well, we ate a lot of tomatoes from our garden this weekend, and I was able to fill up a basket of tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, and peppers to send home with my dad who visited this weekend (he came to install new windows in my house!).

So, here’s the picture of the last animal to hang out in our garden. We’re getting a kitten next week, so maybe we’ll have to bring her out to get one final photo. We’ll see…

Front Garden Cayenne Peppers

As you can see… we’re going to have some ripe tomatoes very, very soon! There are three fat amana orange tomatoes in the front, and lots of misshapen oxacan pink tomatoes. The romas are starting to ripen, so maybe we’ll be making tomato sauce soon!

The chile peppers are still doing well… the purira peppers are getting fairly large, though they are still yellow. They turn purple, then orange, then red! I think they get spicier the longer they stay on the plant – hopefully in a week or two I will have a rainbow photo to post. The cayenne plants are loaded, though none have turned red yet. Again, a few more weeks to wait.

The pumpkins continue to look very pretty, producing more and more male flowers every day. Unfortunately, there aren’t any fruits on the vines, which is why we planted them. Oh well… at least they add a bit of color to the garden in the back. One yellow crookneck squash finally decided to enter the garden. I still have no idea what that yellow and green squash is… the skin seems like it’s toughening up a bit, so it’s probably a randomly crossed winter squash after all.

Since it’s “post pictures of animals in your garden” week, I decided to put up this cute shot of the guinea pig that Chris and the dogs found yesterday. He’s hanging out in the beans, a good hiding place which makes him feel very safe.

Many of our tomatoes are starting to ripen! Tomorrow I’ll post a picture of the tomatoes in the front yard – they seem to be ripening faster than the ones in the back. I’ve decided to buy tomato seeds from Amishland Heirloom Seeds next year (well, maybe this fall before they sell out) – I’m especially excited about some of the white varieties they have, as well as a few of the yellow/red striped ones. I’d like to get a good mix of tomatoes that ripen really early and tomatoes that we have to wait for. It looks like they have a nice selection, and great descriptions that should help us pick the right seeds.

I admit this is tangenitally related to gardening, but here is puck (I couldn’t get much of a picture). When both Puck and me are outside I’ll leave the fence gate open so he can mosey around if he wants. I feel bad the dogs have to be locked up in our puny yard when they ideally they ought to be able to roam free, free as the wind blows. He loves to sniff everything, but unlike Nigel he hasn’t figured out how to eat stuff off the plants on his own.

I forgot to water the peas, socrenezora/black salsify, beets and carrots today. From what I’ve read seedlings should be watered everyday – especially carrots and maybe the salsify too because it has a pretty low germination rate. It was another cloudy, humid day. I couldn’t even say it was “threatening to rain” because I knew it wouldn’t.

Oh and we rescued a black guinea pig. It doesn’t like me and won’t eat its carrot, but I think its better off being with us than out at the park on its own. According to wikipedia guinea pigs occupy an ecological niche similar to cows! Except instead of having lots of stomachs to digest their grass they just eat their own excrement! So I gave it some regular lawn grass along w/its carrot.

I am not the photog Jessi is, but here are the fall pea sprouts. I planted them a couple days ago. Some slugs sprouted up too what with the rain, but the peas seem to have managed okay. I hope all the junk like straw doesn’t hurt anything – I didn’t want to spend an hour cleaning the bed up. Today I planted beets and black salsify. For the rest of the week I plan to work on removing the grass from the side of garage facing the house where next year we’ll have corn, squash and peas. Once the grass is up and the soil tilled I’ll plant the fall manure mix I got which will grow the rest of the year die down in winter and some will come up again early next year before anything could be planted.

I tried to take a picture of this sign that told you where to dump pesticides today and then I was going to write something about how our country’s “War On Terroism” and conventional agriculture’s “War On Pests” is analogous, but maybe its better I don’t try to get political on our gardening website!

Last night the skies finally opened up and it poured for a good hour. It’s drizzling this morning. Looks like we got just over a half inch; it should continue to rain throughout the day.

Maybe this will put a final boost into our garden, and we will finally get some tomatoes before the end of the month. We had planned on canning jars and jars of tomatoes and making a lot of tomato sauce… I don’t know if the plants will have time to produce any more than what’s waiting to ripen now.