Sure doesn’t look like a pumpkin!

THIS VOLUNTEER SQUASH VINE has turned into a monster in my small vegetable garden and it turns out not to be a pumpkin plant, but more like delicata squash. No matter, as it will soon be a mere remembrance of a generous experiment in curiousity.

Red oakleaf lettuce seeds, like little fairies waiting to take flight. Probably 6-8 generations away from original planting.

Finally seems like fall here with the arrival of some intermittent rain this past week and the dial back of the setting sun, a little earlier each day.

Berkley Tie Dye

With regret, it was time to pull up the tomato and pepper plants on Sunday. Good news: put up seven pints of green tomato-chile salsa on Monday. Ate fried green tomatoes one night and last night a salad of thinly sliced a green tomato, thinly sliced not-quite-ripe pear and some greens made a nice salad.  This year I bought tomato and pepper plants due to our trip and found some that I had never heard of: Berkley Tie Dye, funny shaped fruits that ripen to reddish green outside and inside; Porkchop, a large yellow beefsteak with green streaking at the shoulder and Nebraska Wedding, another beefsteak type that was yellow, with a blush of orange. All tasty so I saved seed from each for next year. Now only a few ripe and ripening ones in a bowl on the counter (sigh). It will be six months or more until we taste a decent tomato.

A ripened Berkley Tie Dye tomato, streaked with green.

UPDATE: After the initial post, I found a ripe Berkley Tie Dye in a bowl with some cherry tomatoes and an Aunt Ruby’s green, so had to share.

Time spent this weekend will be planting garlic and fava beans if the weather cooperates.