Hedge No More

I have one fairly large problem with my little backyard garden, I have to water over the top with sprinklers because that's how my grass is watered.  The yard was designed for grass, not vegitables, so. . . .  Vegitables like to be watered on the bottom.  If you don't, you get mildew and other issues.  My hedge of tomatos and cucumbers were starting to show the effects.  Plus it has been so hot here that no new fruit was really setting anyway.  Same thing happened last summer.  They did start to produce again when it started to cool down, but I had weeks of them looking bad until then.   Finally, I had to travel for work and so some of the extra watering didn't get done when it was needed so they were really looking sorry.  My solution was to pull most of them and plant potatos where they had been.  I should get a good crop of potatos and not have to look at an ugly garden in the meantime.

Sprinklers make the lawn look great, but the garden look bad.  Here is the garden with the offending plants gone.

When everything got pulled, we picked everything, whether ripe or not.  If it's ripe, we will eat it fresh.  If it's green, it will be pickled.

I don't know the name of the little red tomatos on the left, but they are great.  They are still growing in the new L shaped bed.  They get a lot of shade and so don't look as bad as the rest.  I never caged them in the spring, so they have just run all over the place.  The round red tomatos to the right are Porters.  They were developed a few miles from here in the 1930's.  They stand up to the hear well.  They don't have a perfect texture, but not bad.  They didn't get pulled either.  The yellow tomatos in the upper right are Lemon.  My first year to grow them.  They weren't in a great spot, but did relatively well.

These are some of the last from the monster.  The heirloom yellow pear was simply huge this year.  I didn't pull it, but did cut it back quite a lot.  It should put out some new growth and keep producing.

Here are the potatos cut and curing before they are planted.

I made homemade fermented sauerkraut about three weeks ago.  I tasted it yesterday and it was pretty good so I jarred and processed it for 15 min. in a water bath.  Should be good for a long time.  I'll make dill pickles next.  In front are the roasted bell peppers I grew.  I only had one plant and wanted to do something nice with what little was produced, so I decided I would let them mature until red, roast them and put them up in olive oil.  They will be good for sauces and salads now.

Kraut looks pretty good.  I have a jar in the fridge getting cold.  It won't last long.