Garden Recap- PART 2

 July 18th - The tomato frenzy begins!! This is the point where you stay up half the night, every night to can, pickle, freeze, dehydrate etc. It's fun at first. By August, I'm just plain tired! I think I was so caught up in canning, I didn't get a single picture! My Roma tomatoes saved me this year. Years past I couldn't get enough tomatoes at once to can big batches. I finally realized I needed more determinate tomatoes with bear all the fruit in about 3 weeks. Picture of the canning jars in the basement coming soon... For pickles, I did our usual dill, plus a few sweet, and some relish in canning jars. When I was spent, I started fermenting them. Though they ended up kind of squishy (I didn't have any grape leaves to help them stay firm) , they are so yummy fermented. I prefer them now over water bath canned pickles.

Lots of varieties of cherry tomatoes. Black cherry, egg yolk, sun gold (the only hybrid tomato I grow), tommy toe. Each has it's pros and cons. Egg yolk are mild and softer than the others, but lasted the longest. I was still harvesting up until a few weeks ago. Tommy toe is more old time flavor. Sun gold is crazy sweet like candy and early to produce but they were also the first to give up in late August. Black cherry, no negatives there. They are delicious!

 July 25th brought the first watermelon. Orangeglo.

It is sweet though has none of the "tropical" flavor in the seed packet description. We also planted Ledmon, a red variety. Ledmon is the best.

 August 8th - More watermelon

 August 11th

The first Ledmon melon.  They are so good!

We even weighed it for fun. Came in a 31 lbs!

 August 22nd The beginning of the sweet potato harvest.

 My usual helpers ;)

It was a good year for sweet potatoes. They were giants. No nitrogen went into the bed. I did a potassium in the way of greensand.

At this point tomatoes where slowing way down. By the end of August the majority of my tomatoes were done. I had big plans to stagger my tomato planting doing some May 1st and another batch June 1st. It didn't happen. The romas did awesome. I saved and used some jersey devil (an indeterminate paste tomato) seeds from last year. Come to find out those jersey devils had Fusarium Wilt from the seed I saved. I had to rip them out early to keep it from spreading to the others. I had save the seed late in the season and I think that was the problem. Next year, I'll just buy the seed.

 September 9th. Beans. These are Black Turtle. I love them! They are matte black and small but did really well. I planted them right after I harvested my cabbage in that bed, early- mid summer.

Here's what the pantry looked like September 9th. I had yet to do my applesauce (did those in October, 36 Quarts).

Jams-
Strawberry lemon, peach, blackberry, grape

Pickles-
Dills, Sweet, Relish

Tomatoes-
Salsa, Whole, diced, sauce, and pizza sauce

Peaches-
Spiced, Regular light syrup

Dehydrated-
Sweet Peppers all colors
Zucchini
Tomatoes
Chili Peppers
Peaches

Cold Storage-
Beans
Butternut Squash
Acorn Squash
Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes

Still wishing I had more tomatoes at this point in the year (November) we use those often. Especially Pizza Sauce.
We ate through all 60lbs of potatoes minus some for seed.
I didn't count my cans. I should do that next year. We've already eaten enough it wouldn't be accurate. If I had to guess, I would say maybe 150-200? Nowhere near my crazy sister ;)

Fermented-
Pickles
Sauerkraut
Kimchi
Lemons (though not from my garden ;)

Froze-
Green Beans
Corn
Grape extras
Blackberries

I will also be canning cranberry sauce soon. Because store bought cranberry sauce is just not as good :)