Yesterday's haul

This is what happens when we miss a day (ok, maybe two) of harvesting.  The zucchinis are out of control; they always end up out of control by early August.  You would think after a couple of years of gardening that I would learn to only plant a couple of zucchini seeds.  Instead, in my efforts to "scale down" this year, I planted 10 zucchini plants!  Now it's taken over the kitchen, along with the cukes.

Beans, beets, onions, shallots zucchini, cukes and one lone yellow straight-neck.

The bush beans are slowing down, thankfully, since I have enough frozen at this point to get us through the winter.  Our pole beans are just starting however.  The onions and shallots I don't mind; they are stored in the basement for winter use and we go through a lot of them.

I have to admit I have a little onion envy though.  We were over to friends' of ours last evening for dinner and they are growing Wala Walas - a sizeable sweet onion -- and they looked gorgeous!  Each was larger than a baseball and perfect looking.  Ours are only minuscule storage onions by comparison.  They had some fabulous looking green peppers and already ripened tomatoes as well.  I came home with a bunch!  In contrast, our peppers didn't make it through the wet June and our tomato plants, although loaded with green fruit, have yet to show signs of ripening.  Tess and Mike are using raised beds for most of their garden and the results are impressive.  Nora showed me a local article yesterday morning, coincidentally, discussing the use of raised beds and how helpful they have been in our very erratic summer (wet June, hot and humid early July and chilly end of July and early August).  So we were already considering putting some in this fall to try out for next year.  Seeing Tess and Mike's garden has sold me on the idea.