Early July

The first of July already!  Terry is in Gettysburg participating in a Civil War reenactment.  He won't be home until Monday evening, July 3rd.  I am part of the home front, doing my share by gardening.

Vegetable plants are looking pretty good and it won't be long before the serious harvesting begins.  

In the foreground are two Butternut squash plants. We love this squash baked with cinnamon and brown sugar.

The vegetables in the other part of the bed are green beans.  We like green beans and grow them in more than one bed.

Our Roma tomato plant is growing nicely and has plenty of blossoms but no fruit yet.  We don't have much luck with growing tomatoes but so far this plant looks okay.

Our second zucchini of the season.  This year we only started three plants but one of them was broken by severe wind gusts and died.  We will try to plant again later in the season. Our goal is to stretch the season so we don't have so much freezing and canning to do at one time.   This plan is keeping with our "Trial and Error Gardening". We learn valuable lessons from each new technique. We either learn a new method that should be repeated or we learn what not to try again.

The sixteen foot bed along the side of the garage is the home to pumpkins and pinto beans. We found a nice orange, round pumpkin that is supposed to make tasty pies.  The plan is to cook the pumpkin flesh, puree it and freeze it for pie making.  Our way of combating the rising cost of canned pumpkin.  Another trial. 

The pinto beans were a trial last year and did well.  We will allow the bean pods to dry on the plants and then pick and shell them.  Last year we vacuum packed these dried beans for use in chili. We still have a few packets of dried beans so we consider this trail a success. Hoping it will work again this year, although a lot depends on how much rain we receive close to harvest time.  Maybe we will try kidney beans next year.

All for now...