Very nice looking garden, Kevin, even it is awfully late in the year./w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif We're already tired of the garden this year. My wife has filled all her canning jars and the freezers and I have no idea how much we've given away. We have a grasshopper plague again this year, but they arrived late enough that we don't even care. We got all the radishes, cauliflower, and cabbage before any grasshoppers arrived, and last year they literally ate the entire tops off the onions before I was ready to pull, bundle, and hang them up, but I got them all in before any damage was done this year. And they didn't hurt the potatoes, beets, and carrots before we got all of them harvested. And last year we had a good early crop of green beans, but the grasshoppers destroyed the black-eyed peas before we got any at all. This year we gave green beans and black-eyed peas to anyone who would take them, and nine days ago I mowed them all down, even though they were still producing well; we couldn't use anymore and the neighbors and relatives had all they wanted. Then the next day (6/14/02), I pulled the last of the sweet corn and used the Beaver Blade on the DR trimmer/mower to mow down the cornstalks and blackberry vines. Day before yesterday I pulled all the squash plants; they were slowing down and the grasshoppers were getting them pretty bad, too, and we couldn't even give away anymore. So now all we have left is okra, bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and cantaloupe. We have some big, pretty cantaloupe, but all still green as can be. And the other stuff is going to waste; I could probably go out there right now and pick 100 pounds of ripe tomatoes, but wouldn't know what to do with them. Last week a friend came and picked 15 gallons of tomatoes one day to make salsa and we've had 3 neighbors picking tomatoes the last two days, but they didn't make a dent in the crop. Those Big Boy tomatoes sure are great this year; lots of solid meat with very small seed pockets, and big enough that one slice on a sandwich covers the slice of bread and sticks out on all 4 sides./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif The only thing that didn't do well this year was turnips and that was mostly because I planted them way too thick.
