The Ugly Truth

The plain, cold truth about my end of summer garden, is simply that it becomes ugly. No longer green and lush and bordering on uninviting. Not that I get to stay out of it. It does however continue to yield massive amounts of produce for me to can or feed to the chickens. The corn patch was roughly 70x15 and gave about 450 ears of corn. A little over 200 of those we put up and the rest we shared. It was very sweet and done to perfection.

This is my sea of Roma tomatoes. The tall ones in the background are Celebrity and Better Boys. They are all doing well. I have canned loads of crushed tomatoes, made V8 juice and will try my hand at sauce tonight. Apparently many others in my area don't have red tomatoes yet. I have been harvesting mine for 4 weeks now. I am getting kind of tired of them.

I ordered some cool green tomato spirals for trellising from Gardener Supply this spring. They would have done beautifully had I not overburdened them with the tomatoes I chose to put in there. The Celebrity is such a prolific grower that these spirals would have been great save for the not big enough part. I will try some other variety in them next year.

We do have a couple of these huge pumpkins on the vine. Pumpkins are a total waste of space in my opinion but my hubby loves them so there you have it. He's the muscle behind all of these projects so pumpkins it is.

I admit the cucumbers have totally gotten away from us. They turn from usable to football sized in one day and I am not exaggerating. Those things don't mess around. I haven't been pickling like I thought I would so we give them away as fast as we can. Chickens love them too. Good thing. Doyle is slowly but surely removing the corn rows and drying some of them for the goats to chew on this winter. They like dried stuff so he hangs them in the barn to crisp up. Spoiled goats.

This photo shows just how tired the squash and zucchini end of the garden is looking. The sunflowers are doing their part to beautify the garden but the beans are tired and I have been ripping them out as they become done. I still have to can one more harvest of green beans and finish shelling the dark red kidneys for storage.

This assemblage of photos was to show that a practical garden doesn't normally look pretty all season. The reality is; as the fruits and veggies become harvestable, the plants become less attractive. I like (need) things to look nice and clean, green and healthy. When the late summer hits and things become less aesthetically appealing, I find my interest waning. Yet, there is still so much to do. Try to tell the tomatoes I don't want to play with them anymore. I think I can hear them laughing now.