Tomatoes, finally.

We did get to pick one tomato on the 5th of August.  It was a Siberia.  The Siberia have given us about 6 more since then. Hubby says they are good, one the small size (like a really big cherry tomato) not very sweet but very tomatoey.

The rest of the plants are finally going from green/white to a yellowy color and many are becoming very red.

I took photos a few days apart over the last week or so that i haven't made any entries:

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These i picked on the 12th

I got to have the little pear tomato, it was a bit mealy, but it has been dry. The flavor was nice.

I have gotten a few more tomatoes since then

(edit in that picture)

The corn is continuing to be motivated

Some slender ears, they have gotten a bit fatter since this picture was taken

.The purple tomatillos have put out a number of berries

The ornamental eggplant is looking interesting

The big pumpkin is getting very orange.  Not bd for my first pumpkin...and the accidental one that it is. The other two are looking fine, the middle sized one is beginning to ripen as well.

I discovered that i do have a big birdhouse gourd. It is buried in a tangle of vines and has to be close to 2' tall

The squashes are looking nice and it looks like i will have a plentiful harvest of them. The Carnival (pictured) has at least 6 that i can see and the Long Island Cheese is working on at least 4.

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I didn't photo any cucumbers, but we are averaging at least one a day. Not enough to do anything with, but perfect for an occasional snack.  I will plant more next year, even though the production level is not overwhelming- i want to try some cucumber recipes with the extras.

The watermelon has been a toss-up.  I had some nice Pony Yellow forming but they got to Candlepin bowling ball size and then cracked in half.  I do have one round melon still going strong, its almost standard bowling ball size now, but i'm not sure which variety it belongs to.  The oval watermelon is still growing nice. I checked them for cracking yesterday and all seems well so far.
I wonder if i will be able to figure out when they are ripe enough to pick.

oval

Shiso

Purple podded green beans in flower

The purple beans are taking their sweet time, but the Provider beans are still going,  slowly but i can get about a pound every 4 days.

I think my "Venous Orange" is trying to flower.  No scent so far,  which is  disappointing.

Back view of garden.  The weeds are taking over.  I simply can't keep up at this point.

Oh, and this is what Job's Tears plant looks like as its going to work on making seeds

I hope i get enough seed to replant next year and get some for beading projects.

I saw one sweet pepper forming, its not tiny anymore.  I saw some of the hot peppers flowering,  no eggplant yet.  The summer squashes are still going, the herbs are doing great. I pulled a few more beets but i'm leaving the carrots a little longer.  The melon leaves are turning a bit yellow, not sure if this is disease or dryness. 

So that is the rundown to catch up.

Rain...rain and more rain.

Oh, i am so tired of rain. It rained all last week, yesterday we had a nice sunny day- but cold.  Now we are back to rain again. If it isn't raining its cloudy, which isn't much nicer. Wednesday we had high wind, and it almost blew down the fence!  The ground out there is so rocky that when my hubby and dad were using the auger to bore out the post holes, the auger would get kicked down at an angle, making the holes bigger than they needed to be, and any rocks down there had to be removed- so we ended up with loose soil around the posts with a good deal of void space.  This is normal when using an auger and not much of a big deal... until you get so much rain in one season that the ground is so soggy it can hardly hold its own weight. So, hubby had to go out in the cold wind and refill the voids around the posts.... took a couple wheel barrows full he said.  I was busy with the baby who is now crawling at lightening speed and is pulling up onto furniture and cruising around, so i didn't have time to snap my compulsory photos or to even see what the mess looked like and how bad it was.

Good thing is even with the steady rain and high wind, there was little road flooding due to the town finally getting off their can and sending out that crew to clean out the street drains! Yay!  This is a serious accomplishment.

Its also a big help that Justin has managed to get the basement well cleared out and has had time to begin painting the basement walls with a dry-loc waterproof paint.  Its looking really nice down there actually...  Its already a storage area, but since its beginning to look neater and stay dryer, its possible that more things will be stored down there and kept in much better condition.   The toughest part, now that the water issue may be on its way to being eradicated is the dust.  This house is so dusty it is driving me batty.  I remember dusting daily as a kid and remembering that it was more of an exercise in obedience more than a necessity... but this house- its a never ending ordeal.  No, i don't dust every day- but if i did it wouldn't be overdoing it.  Even without the birds, it is dusty.  I had assumed before that it was mostly feather dust, but now it seems that was not the case.  I have a Dyson and i thought having that would help a lot since it really hauls a lot out of the carpet, but even that is not enough and i vacuum daily.  I think it has to do with the likelihood that this house is made up mostly of horsehair plaster and blown-in cellulose insulation and i suspect the lady who owned the house before us used her carpet sweeper rather than a vacuum judging by the condition of the carpet.  Not sure what can be done to eliminate that as a source without gutting and redoing everything.
Maybe i will have to dust daily.  Air filtration is expensive.

So...while i'm trying to type here i am making some turkey stock on the stove. Gets the house smelling nice and cozy and the hot pot makes the kitchen just a little warmer. I like making stock with the scrappy ends of whatever other veggies i have, usually carrots and other root veggies, celery leaves, onion ends...  I also have a crock pot of beans going. I made a gingersnap crusted ham for Thanksgiving as well as the turkey and i thought the ham bone would be nice to flavor the beans with. I used applewood smoked bacon in there as well..  i don't use salt pork much, it doesn't add any real flavor in my opinion. Why use salt pork when you can add bacon?  Its harder to find anyway.

Oh, for my mushroom research... i found a kit called TeePee.... you can grow Oyster Mushrooms in a roll of toilet paper!  It is unreal, and i think i just might try it out. Fairly inexpensive, considering they send you the supplies (except the paper) for 15 rolls- which can fruit as many as 3 times for $36. I like that it gives me material for 15 attempts.  I just need to figure out how long the spores can be stored because i don't know what i think of having all 15 rolls going at once. I guess if they produce famously, i could dehydrate the stuff.

I wish i could grow wood ear mushrooms, the closest Chinese Food restaurant makes their Hot and Sour soup with those in it and edible lily buds... it is very good. I need to find what type of lily buds they are and if they buy them in a tin, dried or fresh. I love Hot and Sour Soup.

Farmer's Almanac is dismally off so far...calling for less-than-usual precipitation and a snow storm around Thanksgiving.  If you want to play the game, you could substitute "wind storm" for "snow storm" and say they were right on the money.  We only had one slush storm so far and wet flurries before the last day of October. So, i don't know how reliable they will be this coming spring for planting planning.