Salsa, garlic, pumpkins, tomatoes and peppers

It has been a very busy week in the yard and I kind of fell behind blogging! I hauled out the pressure canner and turned several very large zucchini into salsa for the winter. 

I will do another batch (or maybe two) later in the summer. Currently have the zucchini beaten back and waiting for the tomatoes to ripen.

We also pulled the garlic and I have hung it in the garage to cure. It is pretty good sized. I will give the plants a bit more space next year and see if that helps the yield. I suspect water was an issue this year.

We have five pumpkins set (and maybe a few more about to). So fat the hail has managed to miss our yard and the pumpkins are getting bigger each day.

They use a lot of space and I might prefer to have a different kind of squash (butternut makes a nice soup) but these are lots of fun to watch.

I also started to haul out some beets and a few onions. We made a kale-zucchini-potato-onion soup entirely from the garden.

Around front I started make some slight changes to the north beds (with the garlic and a few potatoes out)--basically closing the rows on the north end to get an extra 16 square feet (once I get them all done). I also planted some buckwheat as a green manure. The buckwheat we were growing in the back was cut down and turned under and I planted a late crop of radishes.

I have been watching the tomatoes for signs of ripening and we're starting to see a lot of blushing and few are red (almost red enough to harvest). The paste tomatoes have a bit of blossom end rot from the drought on the earliest fruit so I pulled the off. The late fruit seem fine.

I also have a lone green pepper! Whatever it is that I am doing wrong, I only ever seem to get one pepper from my plants. I will toss this guy in the salsa.

I expect the apple harvest to start soon. Not sure I am physically ready for that kind of onslaught of work, but I may be able to cajole Jennifer and Jessica into helping given how much they like apple sauce.