Looks great Rita! Do you make sauce?

I don't can but I do cook some for sauce and freeze the sauce for winter use. Also I made my own stewed tomatoes in my crockpot, so easy. Freeze them also.

Mostly I just eat a lot of tomatoes during the summer and give tomatoes to all my friends.

I freeze mine too, want to learn how to can though.
Did you ever roast them? Ohhh sooo good

Nope, not wanting to can. Too much work for this old lady.

Well, the only time I have tried roasted sortof is grilled.

Roasting them is so easy and so yummy!

Rita wonderful job on the garden this year! I eat tons of tomatoes myself but most of the tomatoes get turned into homemade Salsa. I make a sweet & hot cooked salsa that I can.

I had this flower bed area. Actually it was a tall bearded iris bed. But the iris just were not doing well there. I lost most of them to rotting over the winter. So I decided to convert the area back into a veggie bed. It actually used to be part of a veggie bed before I converted it to iris!

So I dug out and relocated any healthy iris and tossed out the rotters. Now I have this four foot wide section. Forgot to measure how long it is.




Then I mulched it with straw and put out some bamboo stakes at the side to measure out where I intend to be having rows of pepper plants next year. And I have two green fence post stakes to show where I intend to add two more cucumber trellis. You really need to enlarge the pictures to see them.



For now I just have some root veggies planted in there and will use it for whatever I plant for the fall. But next spring I will have a nice place to plant my peppers instead of having them stuck here and there all around the garden. And I will have space for the more cucumbers I want to grow.

BlackCat08 said:Rita wonderful job on the garden this year! I eat tons of tomatoes myself but most of the tomatoes get turned into homemade Salsa. I make a sweet & hot cooked salsa that I can.

Karen, sorry to be so late to the party at the Northeast Forum. Do you have a large veggie garden? Maybe post some pictures, please!

Picked four cukes and some tomatoes. There is a watermelon growing too.

Oh time for tomato and cucumber salad!

looking great Rita.. and yummy!!.. I can say Karen's salsa rocks!!!

I really love to grow veggies, especially those home grown tomatoes.

Only one of us eats tomatoes (me) so buy them now.

Rita it's just a basic suburban garden. The garden was dug out to a six foot depth in the late seventies and has been going ever since. I'd say it's about 30 foot by 10 foot. I've totally run out of space and expanded to container gardening on the south side of the house as well as containers in the backyard and the deck railing. I currently have 3 large compost bins and 1 long term heap going. (During the school year I bring home all the veggie waste from the high school kitchen I run). So far I've been able to maintain and make all my own compost to add to the garden ever year. My biggest problem is shade on the garden. It's in the way back yard and behind it is a woods line where the deer roam freely. Hence the yard is more or less fenced in with deer netting. My biggest crops are greens. (swiss chard, kale, collards, lettuce, red beet greens) I love and live off the garden all summer. Ever year is different as I don't have enough space to always rotate the crops. Haven't taken many pics this year so tomorrow hopefully when the sun is out I'll get out with the camera. It's not as impressive this year as it was last year because of all the cold weather and rain. Still no peppers, cucumbers are just now starting to grow and tomatoes are just ripening. It's been greens all the way so far with beans and peas. I can assure you it is all organic though. Bug control is all done by me and fertilizer is homemade compost tea.

Deer and shade would be big problems. I am very fortunate not to have deer here.

Funny about the container gardening. This year I am growing squash and eggplant for the first time ever. And I am growing them in pots on my sunny driveway.

smart Rita.. they do like it hot.. can't wait to see how they turn out

I had no more room in ground. And I wanted to grow zucchini and yellow squash and also eggplant for the first time ever. I have read that these are heat lovers. Looking at my driveway, it is in full sun. I was thinking too bad I can't grow them there. And the light bulb went off in my head. I can grow them there in big pots. So now I have a pot ghetto on my driveway growing veggies. I call it the Driveway Farm.

Rita do you start your tomatoes inside or a greenhouse?
How do you have so many red before me?

being out on the water isn't she a tad warmer?

Looking good Rita!! No matos ripe yet here except for 'Spoon'. Summer squash is killing me!! I only have 2 plants but they are producing faster than I can eat or give away.


Blueberries are doing GREAT!! I have a gallon freezer bag already full.
This is normal blueberries and then there is 'CHANDLER'.