Been a miserable year for gardening in my area this year. Cold, wet & just plain miserable weather till the middle of May. Around Mothers Day things improved a bit. Wired the new Cherokee tiller to the Kubota & tilled the garden. Waited a week or so & tilled it again. The older fellow we usually buy garden plants from had stroke back in December & his son  took over the green houses. He obviously didn't do te job his dad did but we bought plants anyway. Bought 6 jalapino pepper plants. All he had left. Half of them have died. Bought 4 dozen tomato plants. Four or five of them have died. A dozen cabbage plants. Three or four of them have died/ We have 4 hills of zuchinni. Two 25 yard long rows of corn, Ditto for beans. Put electric wires around the beans to keep infernal rabbits out. They jump the electric wires anyway.

Everything came up good but the weather turned hot & dry with  temp's in the 90's. Growth stalled but we finally got a good rain & things took off. Now it has turned hot & dry again. We've picked a few ripe tomatoes & zuchinni, The turnips are big enough now to pick & can greens. There;s small beans coming on 7 the corn is tasseling out & silks coming on. They're doing their botanical **** thing as Gitano calls it. The corn is only about head high. Pitiful looking stuff in spite of fertilizer & tender loving care. I suspect coons will be checking it out soon. Killed two recently. Tried shooting rabbits with rifle & shotgun but without results. Can no longer see to shoot either effectively. Can't even see to take very good pictures either. Finall sorted out my problem loading pictures into the computer. Just can't see to adjust them very well either. Microsoft & windows 10 made changes to the way pictures are loaded into the puter but it sucks. Microsoft, Google & windows 10 are the pits. No consideration or respect for the elderly or handicapped whatsoever.

I'll try to attach pictures of the garden taken in late June and a couple days ago after I got my picture problem solved. I HOPE. Sorry about the quality but it's about the best I can see to do. The first 5 pictures were made in late June. The rest a couple days ago. .......Paul H .....ps......The 6th picture is the lower side of the garden taken yesterday. Those tomatom plants were set out by my little neighbor lady. She's a tiny  sweetheart. I still have a strip 25 yards long & 13 feet wide for turnips next month below her tomatoes. .....PH....

I'm jealous Paul.
Sounds like it's been a struggle, but there's still a lot of good eating there.

We've been canning garden stuff for  a couple weeks now. Doing much better than I expected but it's miserable. I had two 25 yard long rows of corn & two 25 yard long rows of beans. The corn did better than I expected but the beans were a dismal failure for  the most part. Only got 7 quarts off 1 1/4 rows.  :cry:  There is about 3/4 row of late beans still out there. MIGHT get another 7 quarts but that;s looking doubtful. I also pulled all the corn this week & got 164 ears. Not bad for two 25 yard rows. At least I got it before coons & blackbirds did this year. ........Canned 7 quarts of turnip greens. Could have canned more but I'll wait for the ones & sowed last Tuesday to have turnips on them. I like turnips canned with the greens. I sowed a 12 foot wide strip that is also 25 yards long.

We had 5 hills of zuchinni that produces more than we want. I pull them off & dump them . Nobody wants them. It keeps the plants producing too. Had 6 jalapino peppers & a dozen hot banana peppers. Half of them died. It rained every time the ground dried out enough to work. Weeds took over everything. I have NEVER had such a messy looking garden in my life. After I pulled the corn and picked the beans I used the skid steeer Snapper mower & "bush hogged" the mess.

I'm pleasantly surprised how well the tomatoes are doing in spite of the weeds. So  far we have canned 46 quarts of tomatoes & tomato.veggie  soup. Looks like we could get another 30 or 40 quarts before it's over. It's been a hectic two weeks for us  around here. It's not over yet either. ....A note on the tomatoes in a bucket. I cut holes about 5 inches in diameter in the bottom of six 5 gallon buckets & set them over 6 plants and dumped half a gallon or so of Miracle  Gro potting soil in the bucket & ab b2-3 inch layer of dirt on top of  that. The plants grew taller than the others but didn't spread very much & didn't produce half the tomatoes the other plants did. Don't waste your time &n money doing it in  hopes of better results. It just ain't  gonna happen. ......I'll attach a few pictures. They're lousy but best I can do. ......Paul H ....ps.....I don't know how the varmint got in the pictures. We didn't can it anyway. ....PH....

One of my greatest disappointments with living in Alaska is the inability to "grow stuff" without Herculean effort. I envy those that live where they can, but I also realize that most swords come with two edges.

My mouth literally started watering as I looked at your pictures, Paul!

I tried the 'potatoes in a bucket' last year, and they did well. (On a side note, both tomatoes and potatoes belong to the "Deadly Nightshade" plant family Solanaceae, which also includes eggplant.) While I am certain that potatoes in mounds on the ground would have done at least as well or better, there were advantages to the bucket potatoes, and we got as many potatoes from three 5-gal buckets as we cared to deal with, and the taste was on the whole better than store-bought. "In a bucket" kind of makes sense to me for potatoes. I don't really "get it" for tomatoes.

Paul

Paul, the tomatoes in a bucket were actually in the ground. After I set them out like I did the rest of them, I set the bucket with the 5 inch hole cut in the bottom down over them. I then dumped about one to two inch layer  of Miracle Gro potting soil into the bucket & added dirt on top mostly to keep wind from blowing the bucket over. The results was much like too much ammonia nitrate. The tomatoes keep growing taller but don't produce  much fruit. Pinching the tops off did little to help like it does with normal set tomato plants. ......"Granny" was a big help before she died or whatever happened to her. We miss that old doe. She kept the plants topped pretty good. ......I wish I could send you a couple quarts of tomato veggie soup. I could practically live on it, it is so good.   .......Paul H

Looks like I forgot to mention the 25 pints & two quarts of chowchow we made this week. Another problem around here is finding pint canning jars. It appears the makers have created another "shortage" just to increase prices. A dozen Mason  or Ball canning jars of pint size two years ago was 7-8 dollars. Now "if" you can find them, they're 11-13 dollars. It's all a gimmick to raise prices. They're full of guyano. .......Paul H

I just noticed I spelled bat manure wrong. ....guano......Paul H

Looks like the garden & canning is about finished this year. Best I can cipher, we have canned 207 quarts & pints of various things from the "weed patch." Pretty disappointing but better than I expected. The corn produced 32 quart freezer bags cut off the cob in addition to the canned stuff. .......I sowed a little strip of turnips on August 12th. Close to the apple & peach trees they came up good  but only about one fourth the size of plants away from those two trees. Nothing grows good around trees. That's ok. The rest will produce at least 10 times as much as we need. I canned 14 quarts of greens already & after the turnips come on I'll can another 14 quarts of greens & turnips mixed. The deer & neighbors can have the rest,

Speaking of deer, it appears something has happened to granny's replacement & her baby girl. Haven't seen them for over a week. The boy came home alone for a few days but  now I haven't seen him for three days. Mama appeared to be bummed up a bit in her right back leg all summer. I noted she didn't put weight on it when she stood still. ........Paul H