Tuesday, September 14, 2010

September in the Vegetable Bed


As September marches to mid-month, I am finally seeing maturity in the vegetable bed. While some of the above color is the zinnias, the rest of the color you can see are ripening tomatoes. Finally! I must have 60 green tomatoes on those plants. The garden desperately needs three more weeks of dry, warm weather...and the long term forecast doesn't look promising. So, all I can do is celebrate the current successes and keep my fingers crossed.


A "Black Krim" tomato ripens on the vine.


A cluster of  orange "Persimmon" tomatoes.


Two " Black Plum" fruit. This bush contacted blight early on, but all the fruit it had set early on survived and are slowly ripening.


Two "Seattle's Best" tomatoes.


I am about to be overwhelmed with "Yellow Patty Pan" squash. I have watched the small fruit for what has seemed like months, waiting for the little yellow orbs to get around 3". I waited and waited. Then the other day I looked under the bush and they all exploded overnight from 1" to 6" in diameter. Supposedly they aren't very good tasting at this size, but I did find a recipe the other night for a good sounding soup that uses older and larger patty pans.


My red "Mars" onion are huge and ready to pick as I need them.


The same goes for the "Prince " yellow storage onions.


The "delicata" winter squash are still setting and none of the fruit have ripened at this point.


Most of my "Butternut" winter squash have reached full size but still need a few weeks to ripen.


And last, but not least, the Zinnias. They have started blooming but are getting swamped by the squash vines.

9 comments:

Dan@retrooregon,com said...

I think we all have the same problems with those darn tomatoes this year. Squash are looking good. Hope the upcoming rains don't hurt them.

NEURON said...

Squash and Onions looking well.I have put some of my Tomatoes in to egg boxes in a dark cupboard and they are slowly ripening.

Susan said...

Our tomatoes are still flowering - ugh! Glad to see yours are getting close to harvest!

D said...

Hello Lexa,

Beautiful bounty! It looks as though you have more tomatoes ripening than we. I may simply have to resort to many fried green tomatoes... ;) The squash look great.

I'm not looking forward to the foretasted rain the next several days... but hopeful as well.

thyme2garden said...

Your onions look awesome. My onions grown from sets did not bulb properly. I read so many gardeners complain about too-small onions this year, but yours just look perfect! Did you grow yours from sets, plants, or seeds? I would love to learn how to grow mine to look like yours next year!

The rest of your garden looks great, too. I hope you get enough dry warm weather for all those tomatoes to ripen for you.

Jami @ An Oregon Cottage said...

I second Thyme2garden- those onions are all so perfect! I might have a few like that, but not all- please tell us what you did. :-)

I'm picking most of my pinkish tomatoes and bringing them inside to ripen. I'm not trusting this weather!

Thanks for participating in the TGP!

Alea Milham said...

Your onions are gorgeous! As do those tomatoes!

I did not plant enough onions and we have eaten up almost all of what I planted. I am planning on doubling the number I plant, but it seems that demand rises faster than supply. :)

Lexa said...

Jami & Thyme2garden- thanks so much for the kind words about the onions. They are one of my few success stories this year, so I am pleased. I think that you are both in the Northern part of the US like I am , so you should be able to follow my "rules" just fine. I begin by planting my onions from onion 6-packs that I bought at a good nursery here. They both were grown from seed ( from Johnny's Select). I just created a long, raised bed and planted the very young starts. The one thing I would change is getting them in earlier. Looking back at my blog I didn't get them planted until late April. Next year ( weather permitting) I will try to get them in the first week. Onion bulb sucess is 100% about how much green top growth they have by June 21st. The earlier start, the bigger tops, the bigger future bulbs. I also would shy away from onion sets. They have done ok for me, but not great like plants started from seed. Hope this helps!

thyme2garden said...

Thank you for the mini onion tutorial! I'm very curious about how your onion bulbs are all growing above ground, because I've also seen lots of people growing onions where the big bulbs grow underground in the soil and you can't see how big they are until you pull up to harvest. Do you happen to know if it depends on the onion variety, or just a matter of how deeply you plant the onion starts?