I was to make more videos with my granddaughter Bre but August came so fast and I had an Archery Elk Tag for Colorado beginning of September. Now that is over, didn't go well, so I've been cleaning out the garden.
I have salsa peppers that just keep growing! They are as big as bananas! Roma's are coming in nice and as well as my slicer tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes I've cut the plant back at least three times so far. It was well over 8' tall if I held it up.
Cucumbers seem to be tiny finger size and then the next day like a zucchini! Still have lots of pickles from last year yet. Took the plants out two weeks ago.
Corn was fairly good, Onions just wouldn't get any size to them, planted 400 this year and lucky if I got 200! Carrots got taken over by weeds faster than I could keep up so only maybe 10 lbs. worth. Green beans were good again this year. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPwddOifCxk&list=LL&index=2 ) Link to how we clean green beans. I'm sure we have 30 to 40 lbs. of green beans in the freezer and canned a bunch.
Spaghetti Squash was crazy, Pumpkins real good, watermelons about the size of children's size basketball and cantaloupes were about the size of softballs.
Tomatoes are still coming on! They just don't seem to ripen very fast this year for me. But thats ok with me, this way it's easy to keep up with canning. We make lots of salsa, tomato juice, whole tomatoes for stews, chili etc. and pasta sauce. I have a new trick this year for making pasta thicker. I haven't tried it yet but when I do I'll let you know how it turns out.
One trick to keep from getting bottom rot on tomatoes use gypsums with calcium mix. At the first sign of seeing some bottom rot I do fast emergency fix by taking a small hand full of antacid tablets and run them in the coffee grinder and pulverize them to powder and mix in my gallon sprayer with water. I spray the whole plant with the mix, one gallon will do quite a few plants and then several days later do it again. The plant will absorb it through the leaves. Then I mix up my calcium mix in 5 gallon buckets and water with that once a week. My tomato plants have 5 gallon buckets around them with the bottoms cut out. I have them half way in the ground so when I water I fill them to the top. I use my lawn clippings around the outside of the buckets and I do use Preen for weed control around them. When I pick my corn we use a wood chipper to grind the corn stalks and those also get placed around the tomatoes. Really helps keeping moisture in the ground. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7R1E0Jlys ) Another video.
Well I hope everyone had/has a great garden this year. I'm already roto tilling a larger area for next year!
