All Is Safely Gathered In

...well, almost. The end of the gardening season is fast approaching. Many of the plants in our garden look tired. They are falling over. They are yellowing. Their production has been greatly reduced. The beans and the peas are essentially "done". Several of the pea vines are dessicated and brown. The bush beans have flopped over. The green peppers have been a flop this year. All summer long they stayed in a stunted growth state, but now, at the end of the season, are tall and healthy. I harvested 2 peppers yesterday, but they are so small. That may be the theme of our garden this year... small. All the edibles have been small. Nolan planted watermelon. We got 3 fruits, but they were all so small. like the Santa melons they sell in the stores. We planted pumpkins, and we have a huge harvest (I think there will be 17!), but most of the pumpkins are small. We planted a 100+ pound variety and have 2 on the vine, but there is no way they are going to be anywhere near 100 pounds. We planted a jack-o-lantern variety of pumpkin. Some grew to a nice tall-and-skinny size that can be carved, but others look more like sugar pumpkins. The pumpkin vines have really thrived and taken over the entire garden and a big section of the rock wall in the back. We planted lots of tomatoes. The slicing tomatoes must have come diseased because all 6 of the plants started to grow and then dried up and died. We planted cherry tomatoes. 2 of the plants have done great, but a third produced the tiniest tomatoes I've ever seen. Here is one of the larger tomatoes from the "tiny tomato" plant compared to a smaller regular cherry tomato. Funny! We've had a prolific crop of banana peppers. But for the past few weeks, the peppers have become odd. One plant is producing mushy peppers that we just throw out. It must be sick. The other plants are producing mutant colored peppers- purple streaked! I'm the only one who will eat them. Anyway, I'm glad we don't have to depend on our garden for a real source of food. It didn't dothat well and there's no way it produced enough food to feed 5 people. I'd like to expand the garden next year and add more organic material to the dirt. Plans are fine, but this growing season is not quite done yet... I'm watching the frost report so we can finish harvesting the last of the crop before fall sets in.