Yes - I have totally slacked off and let this blog (and my garden!) go to the weeds as they say. Since we got back from vacation everything has been crazy. The car died and we needed to get a new one and sell the old one, I started up grad school again, and other issues of real life have taken priority over the garden.

However I'm still getting goodies from the garden. I have been picking tomatoes regularly over the last month and will still probably get a few more before the season totally ends. Most of the new seedlings I planted didn't make it. The lettuce that I put in the planters kept getting dug up by cats or squirrels and the spinach and cabbage seedlings didn't fare well either with the several huge rains that we had a few weeks back.

Nevertheless I think it was a successful gardening year. I think I've killed off the gout-weed in part of the front yard. I still have another bed to do but that will be next year's project. I managed to clean out the scary shed in the back, but I didn't get to tearing it down. I got tons of veggies this year - and everyone loved my pickles. I already have pre-orders for next year!!!

If time allows I need to start cleaning out the veggie beds and put down some compost for the winter. My shallots are also just about ready to be harvested, and I have a few snow peas still producing pods. My peppers are also flowering again - but I doubt there is enough time left this year for those to do anything useful.

Before I know it I'll start getting my seed catalogs in the mail for next year. I know - it's too early to be even thinking about next year since I have so many unfinished tasks still to complete for this year, but one can dream. :)

I still have some pictures that I need to put up here. I didn't get many (if any?) for September - but I did way better this year than ever before. It will be difficult to beat next year, but I think I'm up for it.

Anyways - thanks for reading about my adventures this year. I probably won't be posting too much until early next year - probably only once or twice a month. See ya then!

I was away on vacation for the last week thus the lack of updates. Everything seemed to survive while I was away - thanks to a neighbor who offered to help keep everything watered while we were away. I had enough cucumbers upon returning to make 4 more jars of pickles. However the end of my cucumber harvesting is near. The plants are starting to die off and are not producing many cucumbers anymore. But I must have made at least 20 jars of pickles. Not bad for only 5 plants! I have people already placing "orders" for next year!

Before we left I picked all of my tomatoes that had the slightest bit of red on them. I left them out on the kitchen table and when we returned they were all ripe - and I had ripe ones outside by that time as well. I ended up making 2 jars of salsa yesterday and more sauce and tomato pies are in our near future.

In other news, I've picked a bunch of my sweet peppers and my last baby cabbage. The lettuce and snow peas that I started a few weeks ago have come up and are doing well. I've also replanted some cabbage and spinach. I'm going to be clearing out my dying bean plants and planting some additional spinach and maybe some swiss chard as well. Hopefully there will be enough time left this year to get a good second crop!

Most of the news that I end up posting is positive and showing how well all of my plants are growing. However that is not always the case and I want to start documenting my plant problems as well. Perhaps someone has some suggestions to my issues.

It seems that over the last several days two of my four tomatillos have taken a turn for the worse. Both of the tomatillos that I started from seed this year (Gigante and Pineapple) are wilting:

They both have fruit on them but they are not filling out the husks as they should be. I have harvested quite a few healthy tomatillos from these plants so far this year, but it is looking grim for the rest of the season. I'm not sure what is wrong. The two tomatillo plants (the ones that I purchased from eBay) next to the two that are wilting are doing great. And last year I grew two Gigante tomatillo plants and they did amazingly well.

I don't see any bugs on the plants. The leaves are all curled up and wilting and the fruits are just falling off when you touch them. I also don't see any mold or other disease on the leaves. I have been watering regularly and the weather hasn't done athing that should cause these issues. Anyone have any idea what may be wrong and if there is any corrective action that I can take?

The only thing that I can think of is that maybe one of the many cats that wander through my garden decided to use that part of the bed as the litter box. Although there is no smell. Who knows.

Starting over the weekend my roma tomatoes have started ripening in full force. Yesterday I had about dozen from the last week and my partner made some more home made tomato sauce. He made about 4 jars total. That put a big dent in our tomato basket that is sitting in the kitchen. However this morning I went out and picked about a dozen more ripe romas:

These are also pretty big and beefy romas so we get quite a bit of mileage out of each one:

But don't think I'm just getting roma tomatoes. I'm still harvesting quite a lot daily. This is today's harvest:

My Tangerine Dream peppers are also beginning to fully ripen and I have enough cucumbers for a few more jars of pickles. I've made about a dozen jars of pickles so far this year and have plenty more to go. Whew!

Check out my ripening Tangerine Dream peppers:

I have apparently had these confused with my Autopick peppers all year long. Last year I grew the Tangerine Dream peppers but as I have mentioned my pepper crop last year was really bad. I only had about 3 of these Tangerine Dream peppers ripen and they were very tiny. Basically about the size that the Autopick peppers are this year. So you can partly see the source of my confusion. Also the plant markers I put down had faded so those were of no help either.

So I discovered my mix up last night while having dinner. We made veggie-kabobs on the grill and I stuck a few of what I thought were the Tangerine Dream peppers on the grill. My partner doesn't like spicy foods so I thought these 'sweet' peppers would be a good addition. He took a bite of one (before I tried one) and yelled out in pain. I just thought he was overreacting so I popped a whole one in my mouth just to prove him wrong. OUCH! The Autopick are really hot. Both of our mouths were then on fire for about 15 minutes.

So the lesson of the day kids is not to mix up your pepper plants. And then don't be a smart-ass about it. Hehe. But now I know that I have some really hot peppers that will do awesome in some salsa. Not to mention that we have a ton of Tangerine Dream peppers in comparison to the Autopick. So next time we grill I'll be sure to use the correct peppers. Hopefully he'll trust me enough to try one again. :)

Get it? This is one of my Black Brandywine tomatoes. A few of them have been developing these 'horns'. I just thought they were evil tomatoes, but my partner pointed out that they look like chicks. I have to admit they kinda do.

I planted some new seeds today. I replanted my snow peas, bok choi, and baby cabbages. It's about time... I've been planning to do that for the last 2 weeks. Anyways, I gave everything a really good watering as well.

My peppers are doing totally kick-ass this year. I have nearly a dozen ripe sweet peppers, my Tangerine Dream peppers are doing great (I've picked 6 so far this year and there are plenty more to come. Last year I only got about 2 (last year was my first year growing them)!). The 'Autopick' peppers are doing amazingly well. I picked a half dozen more jalapeños today, and the chili peppers are getting huge. I'll be taking some more photos tomorrow morning to post. Hopefully. :)

I've been thinking that I need to order some hardy cabbage, spinach, and onions to overwinter. I've never really tried growing through the winter, so I wonder how well it would actually do. I mean it's not like we usually get horrible winters here in Philly. In fact, last winter was rather tame. Very tame. So I'm thinking they may do well.

Oh, and tomatoes. I have two giant bowls filled with them. I'm going to make salsa soon. My parter is going to be making some more tomato pies (really 'pies' - not pizza like at all, but really pie shells filled with tomato, garlic, and Fontina cheese - and they totally rock). And forget about how many Black Cherry tomatoes I have.

I think it is safe to say that my tomatoes are in full force these days:

Yesterday we made some homemade tomato sauce which reduced the stack above by about 50%. However I then went out back and picked some more tomatoes which easily restored our tomato stash to its former glory.

I also made 5 more jars of pickles last night. Whew. Salsa will be in the works shortly, I'm sure I'll get 3-4 jars easily.

OK, I'm gonna geek out here for a few minutes. Check it out, it's Debian 'Tomato':

I just picked this tomato and it was branded with a crack in the shape of the Debian swirl. It's Debian 'tomato' because it is a tomato (duh) and there was a Debian release named 'Potato' several years ago. If you don't get it - never mind.

...Peppers that is:

So far this year my pepper plants have been doing very well. All of them are covered with lots of peppers that are just starting to ripen. It is actually quite a relief because last year all of my pepper plants did horrible. I'm not sure what it was, but I had very little production last year, and the peppers that I did get were really tiny and sad looking. Luckily that is not the case this year. I'm actually getting some good sized sweet peppers (above) too. This guy above was sacrificed for a batch of salsa that I made the other night.