It's getting cold

I covered the tomatoes and peppers with plastic and Agribon covers. Nothing seemed to help the squash and cucumbers. They stopped growing in the middle of September.

The broccoli, cabbage, leeks, and lettuce are enjoying the weather. I need to grow more broccoli next year.

Tomatoes hanging in there

I have lots of green tomatoes that would be better off with a little red color before I pick them. I clipped a plastic tent over the trellises hoping to get a couple more weeks.

This is what they looked like at the beginning of the month.

And now after a week. So far so good, but I expect a frost any day.

Canning day, tomatoes and apples

There were lots of tomatoes in the garden this week just waiting to be turned into sauce. I'm enjoying my new strainer (Salad Master). Saves the time to peel and core the tomatoes, but I did find that cooking tomato pieces for 10 minutes removes more of the pulp from the skins.

I boil down the tomato juice to about half its original volume while adding, garlic, onions, basil, scallions, salt, and pepper. A sink full of tomatoes makes about 8 pints. I can't buy anything that tastes this good.

September is apple picking time and time to make apple sauce. The apples are from a farm in western Massachusetts. My recipe is fairly simple, mix Cortland apples with McIntosh apples and add a couple vitamin C tablets to prevent browning. I finished the day with 18 pints of canned apple sauce and 4 quarts  frozen slices for future pies.

Garden update - end of August

This is a picture of my garden from the East. You can see the shade from surrounding trees lapping at the edges of the garden.

Amazing tomatoes. This is a picture from the North end where I planted Juliet tomatoes.

Juliet is an All-American Selection Winner and seems to be resistant to diseases. They started producing in mid-July and look like they'll continue into early October. I'll be growing them again next year.

Mixing peppers and cucumbers. I ran out of trellis space for the second planting of cucumbers. So I planted them next the to peppers.

Who would have thought the peppers would reach to 4 feet. I was hoping the inter-planting would confuse the cucumber beetles. The second planting of  cucumbers that were planted by themselves are already wilting.

Fall peas. The "fall" peas really spend most of their time growing in the hot summer sun, and don't look so good (brown leaves at the base of the plants, not growing as tall as the spring peas). I'm expecting a harvest about the middle of October.