Drowning in Cucumbers

I'm not sure what happened, last year the cucumbers produced plenty for fresh eating but the lemon and pickling cukes were only enough for a batch of relish and 4 pints of bread and butter pickles.  This year something must have agreed with them because I have 17 quarts of whole dills and 8 pints of bread and butter slices, a gallon bag of cucumbers that I have run out of dill to pickle them in, and plenty for fresh eating and giving away to friends.  The lemon cucumber is literally crawling up the side of my house like ivy and has taken up every spare inch of space in the whiskey barrel that it can.  I'm picking at least four lemon cucumbers a day, and one to four slicers or small pickling cukes daily too.

I'm so tired of pickling!

Not sure when they'll finally stop, or why they did so well this year compared to the years before, but I can't complain about their production.

Last week we got our first tomato, and while I've waited patiently we've gotten enough tomatoes ripe at this point to fill a large bowl, but nowhere near enough for sauces or salsa.  It's hard to wait, but I am trying.  There is a monster tomato out there, and I can't wait to weigh it when it's ready, sadly the tag on it got lost but I think it may be a brandywine.

My current harvest weight is at 88 lbs.  The cucumbers aren't done yet, the curing onions haven't been weighed, the beans are still going, and the zucchini, and the tomatoes have only just started coming in.  This year may set a new record!  Not that that is hard to do since I only started keeping track last year...  Still, the only thing that isn't really doing as well as I'd like is the pumpkins.  There are three pumpkins on three different vines, and they are very small.  The Cinderella and FairyTale varieties are supposed to be bigger, but the Small Sugar is just fine the size it is.  Even the vines didn't get nearly as large as previous years, only reaching the top of the trellis rather than crawling across the shed roof.

That's my update for the day, now it's time for me to go buy some dill and get back to pickling!

Cucumbers and Beans

While July didn't really seem to pay off, August is getting off to a great start.  Pounds and pounds of cucumbers are rolling in, topped off with great big piles of beans.  My pumpkins haven't grown much this year and may need more nitrogen in their bed next year, but there are already three small pumpkins out there.

The zucchini are having their worst year ever, I have only seen about 6 female flowers so far and only 3 of those have grown into full-sized fruits. 

My new bed is teeming with peppers, though none are ripe, and the old beds have piles of tomatoes in them... of course none of those are ripe either.  Not sure what happened this year, even the extra early tomatoes and cherry tomatoes haven't ripened.  Not sure if it was the weather, it's been quite warm with highs in the upper 80s to 90s nearly every day, but we haven't had a major heat wave at all.  No 100 degree days.  For now I'm content with my harvests and hoping that the tomatoes change color before the leaves on the trees do.