Garden Tour

My tomatoes are just beginning to start ripening.  I planted about 30 of them--all different varieties.  Some years, I am deluged with tomatoes, and other years, not so much.  It is the way my garden was built.  Too much rain is a problem for my tomatoes.  Anyway, that hasn't been the case this year.  I am hoping for a lot.  I plan to try and make tomato sauce, and if I get enough peppers--salsa.  I like to dry the cherry tomatoes in the dehydrator for sun-dried tomatoes, too.  I can't ever get enough of them.

Above you will see one of my Tomatillo plants.  I planted them last year when I got them from the Seed of the Month Club.  I didn't know what I would end up doing with them, since I had never even heard of them before.  Turns out they are a sweet/sour fruit.  At first I was hesitant to even try them, and then I discovered how wonderful they are.  I made up a recipe with them that is combined with zuchinni, and it is terrific.  I can't wait until they are ready.  I will be planting them every year, now.  I just toss the seeds in the ground and they are pretty care-free from there.  I also tried some ground cherries--a relative of them.  I only got a few of them to germinate, so we'll see how they go.  They are supposed to be sweeter.

My green beans are going well.  I have bush beans in green a purple and some pole beans.  I really don't like green beans that much if they are plain, but they are fine in casseroles.  I try to freeze as much as I can for the winter.  I love growing and picking them more than eating them.

These are my towers of pole lima beans.  They are growing like crazy.  I grow King Limas and Calico Limas.  They both have huge seeds.  I really like fresh lima beans, a lot.  If I get as many as it looks like I will, I will also be freezing them.

Here is a close up of my bush lima beans.  They are doing great, too.  I should be eating some in about a week or so.  They have smaller seeds than the pole limas, but make up for it by producing a lot.

The last few years, I have been experimenting with dry beans.  You let the beans mature and dry on the vine, and then you shell them and store them in jars.  I am finding that these beans do well on the less productive end of the garden.  Next year, I may expand them all the way through that area and see how they do.

I also have peppers that are not doing much, eggplants that are just starting to bloom, zuchinnis that should start to produce soon, cucumbers that are giving me a few here and there, basil,carrots, beets and kohlrabi.