My time has been shifted to getting firewood the last few weeks so I have not spent as much time in the garden. The watering is a snap with everything under the drip system. Just turn on the valves and come back and turn them off in 4 or 5 hours.

We can get a frost at any time now. I have my fingers crossed that we will make it into October before one hits.

I am also letting the weeds go and only weeding one time a week now around the summer squash and tomatoes. Everywhere else the weeds are having free range.

On Sept 9th we harvested the 3rd planting of corn, picking over 800 ears and freezing 97 1/2 quarts of corn. The 4th planting of corn is now ready and is by far the best of the year. All of the ears are larger and the plants ended up being a foot taller than the rest. This Wednesday will be the end of the corn harvest. The raccoon is back and doing more damage on the 4th planting, but not enough to get worked up over.

The beans are starting to shut down. More than 500 quarts of beans have been put up from the four 75' double rows of Blue Lake bush beans. I will start to pull the vines up to feed to the animals at the end of this week.

The winter squash and pumpkin vines are starting to die off. You can see much of the squash now and it looks as if we can feed an army. I estimate that we have over 100 pumpkins.

We have about a dozen watermelons that look like they are going to ripen. I have two that are probably ready, but I do not want to pick them too soon.

The tomatoes are ripening in large numbers. If a frost will hold out we will get a great harvest. About half of the plants have died or are dying mostly to some sort of a wilt. Truth be known I may have been over watering them, but we have had zero blossom end rot due to the drip system. The peppers are loaded and just waiting to be picked. I have put this off until it was time for Rachel to can salsa. I believe that she will be starting on that this week.

The potatoes are going strong. The Yukon Gold vines have died back due to the fact that they are an early variety but the spuds are large. The other varieties are good and green. The Red Pontiacs at the house have died, but the ones at the mega garden are going strong.

The sun was low on the Western horizon so the pictures looking towards the west are not the best.

I picked a five gallon bucket of pickling cucumbers yesterday. I gave them away due to the fact that I will not have time to bottle them until Friday.

The third picking of corn is ready. We were going to pick it this Friday, but we will try to get it done on Wednesday, before I have to go to work. No more signs of the raccoon.

The beans are still going strong. We picked three 5 gallon buckets worth on Aug 29th, and another buckets worth was picked on Sep 3rd. So far over 300 quarts of beans have been canned from the four, 75' double rows of bush beans. They will be picked again tomorrow and it looks as if it will be another two or three bucket picking.

We have cut and fed all of the corn stocks from the first planting to the goats. Most has gone to the meat goats that we have at a neighbours field with some going to our milk does. We have also been feeding them the old pea vines, and along with the chicken and the turkeys, they have been getting all of the large squash.

You can see the live trap for the raccoon in this photo. I have it baited with an egg. No sign of the raccoon for over a week.

In this photo the corn on the right is the forth planting, and the corn on the left is the third planting (the corn that we will pick on Wednesday). It is hard to tell, but the corn on the right is about 8 inches taller then the corn on the left. The forth planting has been watered with drip from the point that it was about 6" high. The third planting was watered by flood, down the furrows, until it was about 3' high. At that point I got around to installing the drip lines. All of the corn that we have picked has been near perfect. I have been more then happy with the results of the corn, and will water with drip from day one next year.

The winter squash is making its way into the corn and is loaded with squash. Many of the vines are dying back do to wilt. Not sure of the cause, but I suspect squash bugs. I over planted the summer squash thinking that some would die as a result of the squash bugs, but none of it has. The plants are thicker than I prefer, but I can live with it.

It is hard to tell in this photo but many of the pumpkins are completely orange now.

It looks as if we might get some watermelons after all. Several of them are big enough to eat. I am just waiting for the little pigtail type vine to die back indicating that the melon is ripe. The Sugar Baby watermelons are loaded and will be ripe long before the first frost.

Most of the pea vines have been pulled up to be fed to the goats.

Sep 1

Due to the fact that I am the only one in the family that truly likes dill pickles I get to can them. Here are pictures of the great event. I ended up with 21 quarts this day. The cucumbers are coming on strong and I will need to give most of them away due to the volume involved. I plan on canning enough pickles to last me a year. 50 or so quarts may do it. You never know, you might end up with a quart of pickles for Christmas this year, if you are good that is.

I also posted some pictures of the Nantes carrots. These are turning out to be the best success of the garden. We have never had carrots like this. I also planted some Danvers that are doing just as well.