Summer Squash {plus recipe for zucchini patties}

We have been harvesting summer squash this week! 

This spring I planted four zucchini seeds, enough to supply us with some for fresh eating. About two days later my neighbor asked me if I needed any zucchini or yellow squash plants because she had a bunch she didn't need. I thought it would be nice to have some yellow squash to add another color to our summer meals, so I said I'd take one of them. Next thing I knew, my husband came across the yard with a 5-gallon pail full of plants from our neighbor! She didn't know which plants were what variety, so rather than guessing, she just sent them all.... 😳 And I planted them in my garden. All 16 of them. 

Because her plants had been started way before mine, they are a bit ahead, and have been bearing fruit already. I figured if nothing else I will be able to set up our roadside stand early to help get rid of some of it, since we don't need any more in our freezer.

But first, I have been trying to satisfy my cravings for fresh vegetables. One of my favorite summer dishes (although I've made it in the wintertime using frozen, shredded zucchini, too), is zucchini latkes, or zucchini pancakes, or patties, or fritters... whichever name you prefer to call them. A quick look on Google tells me Latke is more accurate, since most people add twice as many ingredients to their zucchini "Pancakes" as I do, while the recipes I've seen for Latkes are very similar to mine. A latke is basically just the yiddish word for pancake, although they usually make them from shredded potato, rather than grains like is popular for a pancake here in America. But I'll just call them patties, as I feel like that is meeting in the middle with a term everybody knows.

Now that we have that little tidbit of useless information out of the way, let me tell you how good these are!

They're addicting.

Need I say more? I have never tasted zucchini as yummy as I have in a zucchini patty. Not even fresh, warm zucchini bread slathered in butter compares. (Did I just say that?)

I was first introduced to them while under my parent's roof as a teenager, and I have no idea where my mom (or sister) found the recipe, but for years I didn't know of anyone else who made them. Then as an adult I spent a summer in Japan, and one morning I was served fresh zucchini pancakes as part of a breakfast smorgasbord, and they were as good as ever! They tasted just like how we made them back home, only my family always ate them with ketchup (except dad who likes his with applesauce), and in Japan we dipped them in soy sauce. Now when I make them myself I vary which dipping sauce I use depending on my mood. Either ketchup or soy sauce pairs nicely with these!

Here's how I make mine:

Zucchini Patties

1 medium zucchini, shredded

1 egg 

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. onion powder

dash pepper

1/3-1/2 cup flour 

Stir all the ingredients together, adding enough flour to soak up moisture from the zucchini. The longer zucchini sits, the more water seeps out of it, so you may need to add more right before cooking. The flour also helps hold the patty together.

Heat skillet over medium heat until warmed through. Drizzle somewhat generously with olive oil to keep the patties from sticking. Drop batter onto preheated skillet, making each patty about 3-4 inches in diameter. Let cook until the bottom is brown and crispy and sides start getting cooked. Flip them over, and let the other side cook until done. 

Serve with ketchup, soy sauce, or eat as is!

Now my mouth is watering, and I really want to go cook up today's picking into some of these! Yum!

{a day late}

"Knee high by the fourth of July"

Here in Michigan, this is how farmers gauge how well their corn is growing. 

We have two holidays for this vegetable crop ... plant around Memorial Day, and it should be knee-high by July 4th. Our first planting is that tall and better, compared to my [short] legs. Our second planting is behind by almost two weeks, which we were hoping for so we could space out the pickings for our roadside stand, and to give us a longer corn-on-the-cob eating season!

Our 2018 Garden

Memorial Day weekend is known in these parts as official garden planting time! Our last frost was technically a week and a half earlier than that, but we have been so busy that even if I could've planted earlier, Aaron wasn't able to till until that last weekend in May.

I had already put our spinach and lettuce in weeks earlier, and it has taken off! Our first spinach picking needs to be today, and I expect to start harvesting lettuce sometime next week. By start I mean, picking enough to bring inside for a salad. Adam and I have been happily munching on our frequent visits to check on the plants! He is a salad boy all the way, and helps himself to all the lettuce he can.

It was high time we got our tomatoes transplanted, as they outgrew our little greenhouse before any chance of frost was behind us. I stored them all on cookie sheets so I could easily bring them in for the night until it was warm enough to keep them outside uncovered. In the picture above, you can see how much taller the plants were than the shelves! Unfortunately, the shelving isn't adjustable. 

We feel like we nailed it on our tomato plants this year. It has been the most successful year yet! I started them March 20 in little Jiffy pellets, and transplanted them into 16 oz. plastic sour cream containers that I had saved. They took to the transplant so well, it confirmed that the potting soil wasn't our issue last year. I really liked having the plants in the containers. It worked well watering them from the bottom so they only soaked up as much as they needed. It was also fun to be able to watch to roots grow and see if that size container was big enough for 4 weeks of growing. When I transplanted them, the roots were definitely ready for some more space, but I don't feel like the plants were harmed any from crowding. 

I labeled some of my pots so I could keep track of varieties and other notes I though were worth keeping. This tomato plant was one that grew out of the bottom of a Jiffy pellet that I had pulled out and decided to transplant just to see what it would do. This photo was weeks later, and even now after 2 weeks in the garden dirt, you can't tell the difference between it and the rest of the tomato plants! 

This was another exciting success! I have tried every single year, for 4 years now, to plant flowers from seed. I finally got one to grow and BLOOM! Granted, it is just one, but it's one success. This marigold was a welcome sight! Unfortunately though, it did not survive the transplant into the garden, and I'm not even sure why. I guess we can always try again next year....

Adam has been my faithful helper and was excited to help carry plants from the greenhouse to the garden. He decided it was much more fun to carry them on top of his head. :)

He also enjoyed running the shovel digging the holes for the plants. We transplanted most of them in the evening when Aaron was home to help (and the one year old was in bed for the night), and I realized as I went to finish the next morning just how much longer it takes when I have a 17 month old to look over while also supervising the ambitious 2 year old single handedly. 

I was so confident I could do it by myself, but it was Daddy appreciation day. 

He does way more to help with our garden than I realized!

Due to not having enough stakes (and not wanting to buy more), we decided to try a stake-less method to caging tomatoes. We drove the cages into the ground a couple inches, and packed dirt around the bottom to hold them. Since we have an electric fence, we shouldn't have to worry about deer running into the cages, which was a problem we ran into last year when we thought for some reason it wasn't worth it to put the fence up. 

One week and a good rain or two after putting our garden in, the tomato plants were starting to bloom, and the corn was two inches tall. We had the perfect germinating weather! Our green beans, cucumbers, and okra didn't get in until at least a week later, and I have yet to see one of those popping out of the ground.  

This double corn plant is compliments of Adam, who thought he needed to plant his corn seeds right next to mine. 

Something we did different this year was take a little extra time for a better looking garden. We squared the edges, made it a little smaller for efficiency (we never planted the whole thing anyway), and made sure our rows were straight. Every year previously we thought we were planting straight rows only to realize the were at a terrible angle because of the odd shape of the garden. We have enjoyed looking at our garden this year already more than any other just because we took the time to do it right, which really wasn't much extra time, it just needed to be done. 

I'm looking forward to seeing what a difference these next couple weeks make, when we can see a garden full of neat, green rows!

Transplanting to Bigger Pots

Our tomato plants have taken off and are growing like crazy! It was high time we transplanted them into bigger pots before their roots were all intertwined in one big knot, so that's what my garden helper and I did over the weekend. 

Last year when I transplanted tomatoes, I used the little biodegradable cardboard cups. Those things can be pretty pricey, and we didn't have very good success with them, so I opted for a free pot option this year. 

We've been getting locally made butter in these little 16-oz. plastic containers. Instead of throwing them out, I saved them to use as transplant pots! Between these and some other random 16-oz. sour cream containers, I had more than enough for this years' crop. 

One of the biggest issues we had last year with the biodegradable pots were that we had a hard time controlling the moisture. The pots ended up soaking up all the water and rotting, leaving the soil inside either really wet or dry. Maybe I just didn't know how to take care of them, but one fail was enough for me to try something different.

In effort to get my watering and moisture levels better, I poked about 6 holes in the bottom of each of the containers with a nut pick. I made the holes more at the bend of the container rather than directly on the bottom so they wouldn't create a seal as they soaked up water. My idea was not just to drain excess water, but to be able to get watered from the bottom, so they could soak up just as much as they needed, and also to encourage the roots to grow deeper to find the water source. This should also eliminate any stem rot due to overwatering.

I started the seeds in these little Jiffy starter pellets (the best way to start seeds in my experience!) You can see the roots were ready for more soil! 

And this is what they looked like re-potted.

Here is what I used for transplant soil. I had told myself last year (after an unsuccessful growing season while using it) that I wouldn't be buying this stuff again, but I didn't know what else to get. Since I'd heard good things about it from other gardeners, I decided to give it another shot. And I went big and bought a cubic foot of it! It was much cheaper in bigger quantities and I figured between this year and next it'd get used. (Providing it actually did well for me this time!) 

So far I think it has been a major success. I am loving my new watering method! These plastic containers have worked so well! I'm beginning to wonder if it wasn't the cardboard pots that were my problem before, and not the soil.

My little buddy was a great help transplanting our seedlings. He has so enjoyed being a part of the gardening process! I was a little nervous letting him help with the fragile little plants at first, but we had extra and I wanted him to be able to help and learn, and he did really well! I could hand him the plants and leave him to do the rest on his own. He was so careful! 

Sadly, our peppers aren't doing so swell. They are only this tall after 5 weeks!!! Some of them just popped out of the soil a week ago. I'm kind of disappointed, since I need peppers but have never done well with them. I think I'll have to change my ways next year and either start them a month or two earlier or else put a heat lamp up. I'm tempted to go out and buy a couple plants from a greenhouse just to raise our chances of harvesting some. 

First Day of Spring

My seeds have been started!

First thing this morning (after breakfast, of course), Adam and I went to work in the dirt and officially started our 2018 gardening season. I thoroughly enjoyed having a little helper working alongside of me. He was so excited to be able to help and happily watered the starting pellets and watched them grow. He is so detailed and careful for a two year old, and took his job seriously when I let him plant the pepper seeds.

I had a hard time figuring out how many of each item to plant, since I'm hoping to sell some produce on top of stocking up and feeding my own family, so I just threw some seeds in the dirt and we'll see how we do! 

I'm going to try three different tomato varieties: Roma (since they bring a high dollar at the produce auction and are a specialty item), Beefsteak (because who doesn't want a giant tomato or BLT sandwich), and Amish Paste (because this is my tried-and-true paste tomato. It has never failed me in all my gardening years, even while I've attempted and failed growing a number of other varieties.)

For peppers, I'm using seeds I had left from previous years. Besides bell peppers, I used up the rest of my jalapeno seeds. I'm hoping to sell those. There weren't any at the produce auction last year, and there are always gobs of men who attend, so I figured I'd take the chance and watch the market!

In addition to the tomatoes and peppers, I decided to try some flowers, too. I've never had success with them, but I have too many packets of seeds sitting around unused. Ideally I should have started them weeks ago, so I guess you can call them an experiment, too. (But then again, what do I do that isn't an experiment?) The varieties I planted are Marigolds and Evening Primrose. 

Evening Primrose are known as an enthusiastically spreading plant. I'm going to see what it does here in Mid-Northern Michigan where it gets below -10*F in the winter. I had the seeds so I thought I'd give it a shot. Another experiment I guess.... but this one is not going in my produce garden! 

Poinsettia Update

It has been nearly 9 months since I've last updated you on my poinsettia, and I'm happy to announce it is still alive!

It's not very pretty at the moment, and I admit it had me worried this last week or two when I noticed it started dropping its leaves again. 

I have been soooo bad about watering it this entire winter. I don't even know if I gave it water more than five times since Thanksgiving, until recently when I started trying to give it a little bit about once a week. That's when the leaves started turning brown and shriveled, and my hopes of keeping this plant got trampled.

My poor plant. The one that has been around wayyy longer than any houseplant I have ever tried keeping. The potted success that has brought green to my winter since 2015. I've had this for over two years!

Did you know though, that a poinsettia actually thrives with less water?! You're not supposed to keep the soil wet, but rather let it dry out a bit on the surface (being careful not to let the dirt get bone dry) before you water it again. I'm convinced my forgetfulness in watering it is the only reason I still have it around today.

Look! This week I noticed little red buds starting again! I about shrieked with delight when I saw them. It's coming back to life! I am so excited to be getting several bunches of red leaves once again. It always takes longer than I expect to get any decent-sized red leaves, so I imagine it will probably be late spring before they are nice and full again.

It's looking rather gnarly not since I've not pruned it back at all. I'm so nervous to try. Technically I should've been pruning it all along, but I feel like my brown thumb would show through and poinsettia would end up dying for sure. I would love to talk with an expert and find out what I really should be doing to care for it so I can maybe have a beautiful, full plant again. My goal is to get it to bloom again in time for Christmas one year, when I can remember to stick it away to hibernate during the winter months.

Planning to Plant

My seed order has arrived!

This is by far the record earliest I've gotten prepared for gardening. I sent in my order in January. Looking back to the first summer we were married, that year I received my seed order in uh... April.

I never thought I'd catch myself getting excited about gardening. Back when I worked at Farmer's Markets, I remember hearing a born-farmer say he started his in January, and my eyes bugged out and probably did a little eye roll because I couldn't believe anybody could be so passionate about having a green thumb. But here I sit, the first week in February, with my seeds all ready, waiting for the snow to melt and sun to shine so I can get some seeds started! Since I'm in north-central Michigan, I can't actually plant outdoors for another 3 1/2 to 4 months. My tomatoes and peppers will be started indoors sometime in March though.

When I sorted out my seeds from previous years, I found I had enough left over of a few items that I didn't have to order quite as much as I had anticipated. We did order heavy on green beans and corn, since these are two items we have or will have used up our stock by summer. We're planning to mass-produce these crops so we can store away enough for the next 2-3 years. When I get tired of canning/freezing, the rest will be either sold at our roadside stand or taken to auction. I am purposely planning a little bit extra to sell, since last year both of these items brought a pretty high price at the produce auction. Beans were up to $22/bushel, and from what I remember, corn was hardly under $3/doz., unless sold by the giant bin.

Other items I bought seeds for include cucumbers, red beets, lettuce, spinach, roma tomatoes, wildflowers, and cut flowers.

The roma tomatoes are for an experiment. I am planning to make a double batch of ketchup this year, but don't really need to stock up on any other tomato products. Ideally a paste tomato works best for ketchup because you don't have to cook off as much juice. I have a tomato variety I like already, but am unsure how well it would sell at the produce auction, so I decided to try my hand at growing romas so I can send whatever I don't need to the auction. They are a common, specialty paste tomato that gathered a high price last year, but was in extremely limited quantity and only was available every couple weeks, even though the auction ran two days a week. We'll see how well they do! To date, I have only had real success with my favorite Amish Paste variety, so it will be interesting to see if I can get romas to grow. 

The wildflowers are because I would like to add some more visual appeal to my garden. Plus, my in-home summer decor is usually made up of fresh wildflower bouquets (often picked and carefully arranged by my sweet husband!). I've tried growing flowers in the past, but have never been faithful in watering them, so they've never come up. I'm hoping this year we'll be seeing nice patches of colorful blooms that we can enjoy all summer long. 

Last week I got to go on a fun shopping trip. Aaron has a rewards card at ACE hardware, since he shops there fairly often for work. We get coupons in the mail every month, and after spending so many dollars (earning him a certain number of points), he'll get gift cards usually for $5 off a purchase of $5 or more. In January, it was ACE's anniversary, and they sent out their rewards members a $10 gift card to be spent on a $10+ purchase. The calendar month flew by, and before we knew it 1/31/18 was here, and the gift coupon was expiring. Since we literally can see the parking lot lights from our house at night, and can't let free money go to waste, I received the honors of browsing the store to use the coupon. It was like a field trip for a stay-at-home mom! I bundled up the kids and went out one wintery afternoon and we rode the cart up and down those aisles. It was quite fun being able to take the time to answer all of Adam's "what's that?" inquiries without feeling like he was taking up precious need-to-focus shopping time. 

This is what we walked out of the store with! A hose nozzle and a piece of caramel (not pictured. It didn't last that long!) that we paid a grand total of 34 cents for! The nozzle was $9.99, but since the purchase had to be $10 in order to activate the coupon, we bought ourselves a treat for the short ride home. I had been needing a hose nozzle for the past few years, but never took the time or money to go out and buy one. Instead, I've spent the past few summers freezing my fingers off by covering the hose opening with my thumb to adjust the spray. Now I have a handy dandy, [almost] free nozzle that I can use! My fingers are already excited to be saved from the ice-cold well water.

Pumpkin Sales

Now that pumpkin growing season is officially over, it's time for a report on our crop!

You may remember that we started our pumpkin plants from seed this year in hopes of getting an earlier harvest. We used our mini greenhouse during some of the cooler spring days and nights, and ended up losing a few plants from accidentally leaving the heater on during the day once. I have since bought a light timer, so that should prevent this from happening again in the future. 

I planted three different varieties of pumpkins: Howden, Jack O'Lantern, and pie pumpkins from seeds I had saved a couple years ago. This was my first year branching out and trying anything other than a pie pumpkin. I was aiming to try a couple new varieties, while also getting a nice range in size. I'd say I had the best success with my pie pumpkins. The yield was much better on these than each of the other kinds. I harvested almost as many pie pumpkins as I did the other two varieties combined. The Howden did the second best. It gave nice, uniform fruit with really pretty grooves. They are more round and robust in shape, making for a nice decorative autumn squash, rather than a taller and narrow(ish) pumpkin like you would normally see carved. The Jack O' Lantern variety didn't leave me too pleased. These pumpkins did really well at the beginning of the season, growing big and fast, but they seemed to stop growing halfway through the summer, and never filled out. If you look at the picture I had posted earlier this summer (I'll post it again below), it's the one on the left. See how long it is? It was a good 12" long when I took the picture, but didn't grow beyond that! The skin was pretty tough, and they had a hard time turning orange. I probably got 7-8 of these long pumpkins (from several plants!), and only picked one orange one, and one other that had turned color only halfway. The rest sat out in the garden doing absolutely nothing. I'm not sure if there were a few defective seeds in the bunch or what, but they honestly don't even resemble pumpkins to me. They remind me more of an elongated green spaghetti squash.

In this image, you can see the one longer pumpkin there on the right. Isn't it weird looking?

My goal in planting pumpkins was to set them out at a farm stand in front of our property and sell them to help cover my garden expenses for the year. Unfortunately not only did the yellow cucumber beetles appear early in the season, but we had a terrible infestation of gray squash bugs, as well. I felt like I was battling a war against them, and there being hundreds of them to one of me, they got out of hand fast. These bugs killed about half of the buds, so ... we lost almost half of our pumpkins. 

In order to hit the busy buying season, I needed to start selling them by the middle to end of September. I had a few orange ones picked and ready by then, but didn't get my stand up until October 2nd. We live on a fairly main road heading into town, so I knew there would be plenty of people driving by, but when a day had past and nobody stopped I started getting discouraged and thought maybe my price was a little high. I had priced them competitively, but wondered if I needed to have them a bit lower just to get people to make a special stop just for pumpkins. While I procrastinated and thought about it, I got my first and second customers, and then felt like if I lowered the price at that point, those buyers might feel like they got a bad deal, so I just left the prices alone. Over the next two weeks I sold quite a few more pumpkins. The most common amount spent at the stand was $3-4 per customer, but there were a few that spent between $5-12 and bought more of the larger ones. 

When I was out picking the pumpkins, I had a few that lost their stems in the process. That really bugged me, because in general, people go for the ones with stems. I felt like I was losing a dollar every time one of the stems popped off. Because I didn't have a huge crop of pumpkins compared to what I was hoping for, I put the stemless ones out there anyway, to add bulk to the table. As the old farmer's market saying goes, "Pile 'em high, and watch 'em fly!" I ended up selling all of the ones I had out there without stems! They didn't go right away, but eventually someone chose them for their own. I sold that funny long pumpkin, too!

As I mentioned earlier, I tried to price them competitively. The pie pumpkins all went for $1, and the largest pumkins for $4. I had some in between ones that I had marked at $2 and $3, depending on size. The $1 pie pumpkins and the $3 medium-large ones were gone the fastest. I had a container out there so it was a self-serve, help yourself stand. A few people must not have felt comfortable leaving their money out there, so they knocked on my door to hand the money right to me. That works for me too, but it's nice not having to feel like I needed to be watching the driveway all day long. I ended up selling all the pumpkins out there, with the exception of one greener funny-looking long pumpkin that I put out later in the season. My total earnings off pumpkins came to $57! I was not expecting to do that well, especially with such a piddly little crop. I am super excited to have a reward at the end of the somewhat stressful gardening season. It makes it all feel worth it. This has more than covered the cost of seeds for 2017, and will cover next year's as well. Seeing how much I was able to make off a mini pumpkin patch has gotten me a touch ambitious for next year, and I may have been planning my next garden already.... If I can do that well on a few pumpkins, what if I expand the stand a bit and sell some more produce next year? Or, if you read my recent post titled "Deal of the Week", you heard about my other business idea; selling at the produce auction. 

Salsa - Check!

The first canning of the season has happened. Finally. I mean, it is the end of August. 

But none of this stuff came from my garden! We still have our first tomato trying to turn orange, with all the others plain old, unripe green. My generous brother-in-law offered me these tomatoes from his garden, so I went over and picked a sack full this afternoon, which was just enough to make me a batch of salsa! At last, I have one of the tomato products crossed off my must-can-this-year list, and it is such a good feeling! My handy All American double-stack canner has helped me once again, and I now have 11 pints of salsa sitting on the counter top, the sound of sealing lids filling the air. 

Pumpkins

Apparently last Thursday when I went out to check the garden and capture pictures for you all, I neglected to peek down inside the middle of the pumpkin plants! I went out a couple days later and discovered there were some nice, BIG pumpkins out there! The one shown on the left was the longest I found, at around 12 inches long. The one pictured in the middle was the biggest overall (approximately 10 inches from stem to blossom end), and the other one shows a few of my pie pumpkins. Unfortunately I also noticed that the terrible gray squash beetles have showed their ugly faces and have been devouring my plants. I spent an evening out there dusting the plants with Diatomaceous Earth until I ran out of that, crushed a few beetle egg clusters, and weeded half of the pumpkin patch (something I hadn't done since they were very tiny plants). Now I need to go out with some soapy water and try to get those squash beetles. I hear when they arrive, it's a hard battle to fight against them. The bad news is that it has been raining here, which makes it hard for me to get out to find them, but the rain has been much needed and will help the fruit that has started growing, continue further into maturity.

Our Pitiful Garden Bears Fruit

This has been a rough year in our garden. It started out pretty well, but got rocky about the time we planted it all outdoors. As usual (but it seems quite a bit worse than usual), our plants are so slow growing. The pepper plants, which we started indoors five months ago are roughly 8 inches tall. EIGHT INCHES! In five months. 

But today. Today I went out and saw progress on these petite little things. We have a few buds! Which means we might actually get some peppers this year! Think the plants can hold up any fruit? I highly doubt that we'll get anything of significant size, since the plants obviously don't seem to be getting very many nutrients to promote much growth at all. But still, these flowers brought some excitement.

Our lettuce has finally been producing well, and we have enjoyed many a delicious salad in these last 2-3 weeks. We have a fair amount without going overboard like we did last year. It produces just a tad faster than we can eat it. 

My experimental pumpkin patch has had its share of ups and downs, as well. They took off with a great start, and transplanted incredibly well. They grew and grew, but then slowed down for awhile, but with the nice rain we've been getting lately, they have exploded once again. I can water with the hose, but nothing makes plants grow like a good summer downpour. Recently I saw our first few little round pumpkins, so it's time to be flooding that patch with water to help them grow big and fast. 

We've had a time with these pests though. This is the third year I've grown squash, but it's the first we've seen cucumber beetles. They are such pests! I heard they can do a lot of damage in a little time, so at first sighting I started crushing all the eggs I could see. This was back before the plants were very big, which made the job a bit easier. Next, I needed to target the full-grown beetles, so I mixed a sugar-water solution and sprayed it on all the plants. It seemed to have helped, since the leaves haven't been getting eaten like they were. Checking on the plants a couple days later there did appear to be fewer beetles, but they were still attacking the stalks, flowers, and base of each plant. I only applied the sugar once, so maybe another shot at it would've rid them entirely. 

My next plan of attack was diatomaceous earth. I had a giant bag left from last year, so I generously dusted every bit of the plant I could. I'm not sure how effective that was, but I think I need to do it again. I've had so many buds die and fall off already, I can't afford to lose any more. Thankfully there seem to be a growing number of them opening, so I may still get a decent harvest.

The sad part is that my larger variety pumpkins seem to be dying in the center of the plant hills. I'm guessing this must be from the cucumber beetles attacking the stem. I haven't noticed it happening to my pie pumpkins yet. I planted those using seeds I had saved from my best one two years ago, and those plants seem to be so hearty and healthy this year! 

 Look! A little pumpkin!

I planted some beets, hoping to get a few to eat fresh and also some to make borscht. Aaron doesn't prefer plain canned beets but loves them pickled, so last year I only made pickled beets. I found myself wishing I had some plain ones just to eat, and also thoroughly enjoyed the borscht I made with the few stragglers that were left in the garden, so I wanted to plan on having some this year so I could make it again! I wrote a blog post with the recipe, which you can find here. 

The deer came through and ate the tops off most of the plants, but don't seem to have been back in the beets since. I was afraid they were all done for, but they have nice, lush leaves once again.

 The cucumbers seem to be doing pretty good, too. By this time last year I was in the middle of pickle season, so they are definitely late this year. I spotted cucumber beetles on these plants as well, but not in the quantity that were over in the pumpkin patch. I dusted the cukes heavily with diatomaceous earth right away, so it was more of a preventative measure than a war on cucumber beetles. This was a couple weeks ago, but I did see a few while out weeding this morning, so I need to go reapply the DE powder again. I think I can stay on top of them here as long as it doesn't rain so much that I can't spread diatomaceous earth.

And then there are the tomatoes. These things have been all over the place. They didn't take too well to transplanting, suffered some weird deficiency that turned the plants all black and purply, and got flooded during the national emergency that was declared in our area, but the buds are plentiful and growing tomatoes! I am super excited to see fruit after wondering if I'd lose all my plants over and over throughout the summer. I have never had such a roller coaster ride watching plants before, but every time the tomatoes showed progress, something else would happen. Actually the latest was something coming through lopping the tops off the plants right through the tomato cages. I thought deer were the most likely culprit, but didn't know they ate tomato plants? My pantry is bare of most all my tomato products, so I need these things to survive. Things are looking hopeful now, but until I see a few red ones, I'm still holding my breath. Here's to anticipating homemade salsa and chili!