Payoff

Last night's harvest: 8 pickling cukes, parsley, dill. Not pictured: 1 sugar snap pea.


Some more of the squash that's growing. This guy's about 4 or 5 inches long.


The margin of difference between the size of Squashimus Prime and all the other squash plants continues to widen.


These guys are almost ready for picking. 1 more day for the larger one, and probably 2 or 3 days for the other one.


It's time to make some pesto ...


These are supposed to be green bell peppers. The tags said green bell peppers. They're much longer and skinnier than the picture made it seem like green bell peppers should be. I think perhaps they were mis-labelled at the farm where the seedlings were packed up. The one we ate the other day still tasted like green bell, though, so who knows?


The Beefsteak Tomatoes are going to overtake us before too long. There are 3 or 4 clusters like this on each of the 6 plants.


Super Chili #1. He's looking good as a plant, but not producing as much as #3.


Super Chili #3 has tons of chilis growing.


The Red Knight peppers are forming. Each of the 6 plants has 3 -5 little peppers like this.


The dill has flowered. Which means the usable bits are starting to pass. We should've planted staggered batches, two weeks apart.


View from above #1.


View from above #2.


Flowers in the Yard Tangent: Hostas. They're starting to open up and beginning to look nice. Which is good because I think the plants themselves are really ugly and boring. The flowering stage is the only point at which they look nice.

And finally ... the entire impetus for even attempting this garden was to work towards one thing, and one thing only ...

Pickles.

The chili peppers were supposed to be for the pickle project, but none of them are ready yet and we've had an abundance of cucumbers over the last week. Last night we made use of the cukes and the dill we've picked and made five jars of what will be the best tasting pickles we've ever had. We used the same recipe for refrigerator pickles last year, which we got from my aunt and tweaked to our particular tastes, but we've never made them with our own produce. They'll be ready to eat in three days.

I thought I'd end this week's update with a few uninterrupted photos of the payoff for all this garden work. Enjoy.