You know that summer is in full swing when the cucumbers are ready!

Sweet Refrigerator Pickles

• 4 wide mouth pint mason jars
• 1 head of dill per pint
• 3-4 slicing cucumbers
• 1 large onion
• 2 banana peppers (or hot peppers)
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 cups white vinegar
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp mustard seeds
• 1 tsp salt

Place a bunch of dill (we used the heads, with immature seeds – but the leaves work well too) in each pint jar.  Thinly slice cucumbers, onion, peppers, and garlic and pack jars tightly.  Bring vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, and salt to a boil. Fill jars with liquid, cover, and refrigerate 2-4 days.  Enjoy!

They’re Back!

This is the adult Vine Borer Moth. She lays her eggs at the base of your summer and winter squash plants, and when the eggs hatch the disgusting maggot-like worms tunnel into the hollow stems, eventually killing the plant.

Unfortunately, we didn’t move the old bean and cucumber trellises with us, and I didn’t have the scrap wood (or the ambition) this year to build something new.

Menard’s sells 10′ PVC Pipes for 97¢. Five of those, plus a bit of hemp twine, makes a really nice bean teepee. I dug each pole 1 foot into the ground to make sure the winds wouldn’t take them down this summer.

One of my projects this year is growing luffa – sponge gourds. These need to be transpotted soon. I’m planning on growing them all in pots on our deck, so they can climb up the railings and hang down.

After the squash borers, the poor soil, and the giant silver maple shading out our garden, we got three little sugar pumpkins this year!

One is still green – though I guess a lot of people grow pumpkins just to eat them green. The green ones don’t keep as long, but we’ll eat it anyway!

Pictured, left to right: a sweet dumpling squash from our Easy Bean CSA, our random squash that popped up in the garden, and a sweet dumpling squash from our Easy Bean CSA. Hah! I now recall getting one of these in our food share last year, but couldn’t remember earlier this year. So, that’s where the seeds came from, and the mystery is now solved.

Maybe if we save the seeds from the squash we grew, more than one will grow on the vine this year. Of course, that would be assuming that the fruit was pollinated by flowers from its own plant – if not, then we may have a new, interesting variety to show off next year.

No, these aren’t our pumpkins. But these are:

I went to visit my uncle’s farm last weekend. They are having a big fall event with tons of pumpkins, gourds, indian corn, hay rides, and more. We helped out some in preparation for the big kick-off.

Relating back to our garden, I brought back a truck full of manure from the farm. It’s still sitting in the back of the truck, and I don’t know how happy the neighbors are going to be when we spread it on! A truck load isn’t really that much, and ideally I’d like to get two or three more before next spring. A neighbor of ours knows someone who has sheep, and so this spring we’re going to go out there to get some sheep manure. Supposedly, that’s the best you can get – it decomposes really quickly, and it makes for a great fertilizer.

These are flowers from squash and/or pumpkin. This morning while watering the garden one fell off and it made me think I should try picking a bunch and frying them. I picked about 6 and put them in a paper towel and jessi thought they were garbage and threw them in with the dog business (can i say crap? i don’t think thats offensive. i apologize if my grandma or someone ever comes across this)! maybe next time.

it is a law that i take pictures of the garden to post about. whats frustrating is how bad i am at taking pictures. this kale sprout is case in point, but we all get the idea – the kale i planted is sprouting.

the idea of this picture was to illustate that lots of my green onions got ruined from the dudes who came and put in a new gas line. it turns out they also broke a shovel. i saved the metal part cause it looked like it was a good shovel. also they like to eat beef jerky and drink squirt. even though i will have less delicious green onions to eat and it is their fault they were nice guys on the whole. they did move all our eggplants in containers out of the way.

today i bought some more seeds. its mostly cover crops for winter/spring and some herbs to plant inside! for this weekend i hope to get started on making my cold frames and/or dig up some grass for a new garden area next year. its been warm the last few days, but i’m sure fall will sneak up on us.

Our pumpkins, though very small, are starting to turn orange! Just a few more weeks until pumpkin pie (or something). Unfortunately, there are only four very small pumpkins on the vine now. Maybe next year.

This Sunday, I’m going to pick up a load of sheep manure to spread on the garden. That should really help improve the soil for next year. I’m also planning to see if I can get some manure from my uncle who has horses and cows in Andover. Maybe next time I go down there, I’ll come back with a truck full of fertilizer!

After all of the planting, removing vine borers, watering, and waiting… it looks like if we’re lucky, we’ll have three small sugar pumpkins this fall.

We need to get in touch with someone in town who has sheep. Apparently, she gives the manure to a few different people in town, who spread it on their gardens. I’m hoping to do this before the frost, and maybe again in the summer. We definitely need to work up the soil; hopefully next year will see better yields.