Garden still providing

[nhlivefreeordie]

These photos were taken two days ago, for an article I am working on about heirloom tomatoes.
This Prudens Purple is a perfect representative of the variety, they are so tasty.


This is a fully ripe Amish Paste tomato, a new staple for me.


Still at least four weeks till frost, I have a lot left to pick.

[capecmom]

Good Lord are those tomatoes gorgeous still! What in the world are you going to do with them? I know you said you were sick of making sauce. Are you just going to freeze them?

[nhlivefreeordie]

Whole tomatoes, tomato juice cocktail, and maybe some more stewed tomatoes. What a year, I can hardly believe we got this much food out of a very small plot of land.

[azlonerider]

Our tomato plants are still producing and will until mid November but they don't look near so nice. We had a monsoon come through and knock them over cage and all. If I try to set them up the main vine would be break... ask me how I know... So now all our tomato plants are in the garden at all angles and look weird but they are producing like crazy.

[capecmom]

We've had several tropical systems come through and just about wiped out our tomatoes. We had a big Nor' Easter before we got a glancing blow by Earl. There are a few green tomatoes left on the plants but not many. I'll wait to yank them but I'm sure it won't be long.

It's been getting pretty cold here at night and that has slowed growth way down also. I only pick green beans may be once a week. Last week I had to toss a bunch of beans that I had picked because upon further inspection it seemed as if they had a little black mildew on them. I've never seen that before.

I've been wanting to clean out the cold frame and start a few things in there but I haven't been feeling well and I have spent
some time sleeping on the couch. Hopefully I'll be able to get that project going soon.

[bonnylake]

My green bell peppers have started growing like crazy, I'm starting to think that cooler night temperatures are good for them. I have a dozen per plant right now!

We live in the Seattle area and only had tomatoes a few months a year before global marketing... my mom had to wait and wait - she would cry to see those pics Wayne... especially in december!

[nhlivefreeordie]

I think you are right about the peppers Bonney, ours have really started putting out fruits again now that nights have cooled some. I took a 5 gallon bucket of mixed Tomatoes, and Peppers of all 4 kinds I am growing and the relatives split them all up and emptied the bucket for me. It is odd that people seem to know enough that fresh produce from your own garden tastes so much better, but won't do what you have to do to grow it. Amazing.
Yes, we are blessed here with a great soil, which I keep amending every year, and great temps for growing tomatoes, but even still, this has been the best year ever. I should have kept weighing the buckets as I brought them in, I stopped at the end of August when we reached 1,000 pounds, I bet if I had kept weighing, we would have made it to a ton, that would have been a good article for the paper, but I got lazy and stopped weighing the buckets, so I lost that story because of my own lack of follow through...

[deberosa]

Are they the Amish paste Tomatoes? (Duh guess I should read the caption!) My tomatoes are gone - it was so hot and dry here that nothing produced as it should. I still canned some tomatoe sauce, but they are over now.

I did get a good batch of tomatillos. And today actually harvest Okra - the first time I've ever been able to grow it! Oh - got one watermellon that was huge and very good this year too.

[nhlivefreeordie]

It was dry here as well, my water bill was almost twice as much as normal, I am going to have that river pump next year if it is the last thing I do. Martin tried to tell me, but I put it off until it was too late to make a difference. Lot's of water went into the ground this year. But I also had my best year ever out of that garden.