Potted cucumbers

 

Cucumbers in a container

The cucumbers I’m growing on my patio in a container are doing well enough, considering how often they need to be watered.  The bottom leaves are yellowing and dying now, but I’m getting a few veggies from the plant.  Overall I’m happy with it.  It’s a neat decoration, if nothing else.

Tomato Update…sad looking plants as August 2008 rolls around

My tomatoes all got blight!  It’s a fungus, I’m told.  The back yard has been INSANELY WET this year, and that probably helped the fungus grow.  I still got very nice looking tomatoes, and I’ll still get a bunch more, but the plants are dying quickly…very, very quickly.

Patch of 12 tomatoes in late July. Dying of blight fungus.

Clockwise from the closest corner…Rutgers, Super Marmande, Gardener’s Delight, Cold Set and the mystery pear tomato that snuck into my seed packet.

Closer shot of the sad, dying tomatoes

The fruit doesn’t have a problem…it’s just the green leaves of the vine that are dying.  I’ve already harvested 24 pounds of tomatoes from these 12 plants and I expect to get almost that much more before they are completely dead.

Gardener’s Delight cherry tomato doing slightly better than the rest.

I actually doubt I’ll grow these fun cherry tomatoes next year.  My main use for them is in canned stuff and it’s a pain to peel and seed these smaller ones.  They aren’t a tiny cherry tomato…some are golf ball size…but still, it’s a lot more work to get 10 cups from these little guys than it is from bigger fruits.

Gardener’s Delight Cherry Tomato

It’s hard not to love these guys though.  Very attractive, very prolific, very tasty and pretty large as cherry tomatoes go.

Close-up of Gardener’s Delight Cherry tomatoes

Canned so far

 

Canning

Above you see chili sauce, spaghetti sauce and salsa plus a jar of bread & butter cucumber pickles and a tiny jar of bread & butter banana peppers.  As I said in another post, I learned canning this year.  We have also already eaten 4 jars of salsa and 4 jars of the pickles.  I am thoroughly enjoying this garden!

At store prices, I’ve made $30 worth of salsa, $15 worth of spaghetti sauce, $5 worth of chili sauce and $10 worth of pickles.  Meh, just $60, and I spent some to make it—especially considering that most of the jars were new this year—but still it’s better than 50% off, completely local, free of pesticide, no preservatives.

And very satisfying!