Smooshy pickles

Opened a can of pickles today. They tasted like pickles, but were quite smooshy. Why?
From http://www.mrswages.com/faq.asp#10:

What causes soft or shriveled pickles?
A number of things, including:

* Holding cucumbers too long after harvesting. They must be processed within one day of picking.
* Growing conditions ... either too wet or too dry.
* Overprocessing. Begin your pickling immediately ... don't leave cucumbers sitting in water.
* Cucumber varieties not suitable for pickling. Those varieties include burpless and slicing cucumbers.
* Using cucumbers from poorly nourished or diseased plants.

Perhaps a combo of 1, 2, and 5 lead to the demise of my pickles.

Mysterious eggs

Someone has been laying their (tiny) eggs on the fence netting surrounding the garden.


The random pea supports are up. Various unused metal cages, some twine, and stakes.


I've put down ground cover on one of the garden sections. I'm going to try to grow cabbage and broccoli in a covered environment. Sure didn't work without cover this spring.

Early September

Finally... some sunflowers. I planted them really late, but a lot of them also got eaten by various critters.


The marigolds are going strong- sort of taking over the tomatoes in some places. here's a fancy frilly one. I have four types of blossoms- dark red, two kinds of yellow starburst, and this type:


The pumpkin is still looking as good as it can with all of the hail pits:


There's a second canteloupe that's coming along pretty well.

Visitors to the garden

Oh no! The groundhog is back. The medium-large bunny is also regularly visiting the garden. And...

Zorak from Space Ghost Coast to Coast now resides in my tomatoes:

Late August

Ok, I'm finally caught up with posts for August. Here's some progress:
The pumpkin is maybe looking more like a Cinderella pumpkin (compare to earlier post)


I think I'm about to be completely swamped with zucchini. I now have three big plants flowering like crazy. Can't even leave them alone for 12 hours- the zukes will grow to enormous, inedible zeppelins if they are left unattended for a day.


The cantaloupe is coming along. Today I found two more hidden under vines.


The "extra" tomato plants I planted behind the second shed are making lots of green tomatoes. One of them seems to have mutated and is producing something that looks more like beefsteak or radiator tomatoes instead of the roma-esque Amish paste tomatoes:


And finally... in the spirit of the cool, overcast, damp weather we've been having this week, the peas have started coming up:

I decided I would try to get some fall peas, because the spring peas died while I was in Ireland.

Catnip anyone?

Sushi cat and the tasty catnip:


I have a few cukes still growing on the struggling, shredded cucumber plants.
Here's a tasty cucumber sandwich:


The view from a nearby hill. My house is in the center of the picture (one story, brick). The neighborhood looked very different from up there.

Garden Update from Aug 13

The tomatoes finally are starting to go ripe in earnest:


Giant sweet gypsy pepper starting to turn yellow:


The watermelon is no more. The hail holes encouraged critters to bore holes into it. It was pretty rotten.


On the other hand, I have a couple of potential cantaloupes!



The pumpkin is doing fairly well, but it looks nothing like it is supposed to look. It is a Rouge Vif D'Étampes- supposed to look like this.