Sounds as if some stuff is perking up, glad to hear it!!

My state-of-the-garden address is as follows:
flowers still blooming, pansies starting to go to seed, roses still blooming, cherry tomatoes good, mortgage lifter has nine, count 'em, 9 tomatoes on it!! and half of them are starting to flush with tints of yellow, columbine and poppy seeds are collected and compost is full and needs to be tossed around...if only I had a pitch fork...

Here is a good creamy peach pie recipe:

* 3/4 cup sugar
* 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1 cup dairy sour cream
* 1 egg, slightly beaten
* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
* 2 cups sliced peaches
* 1 pie shell, 9-inch, unbaked
* .
* Butter Crumb Topping
* 1/3 cup sugar
* 1/3 cup flour
* 1/4 cup butter, room temperature
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400. Prepare pie pastry shell and set aside. Combine 3/4 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour, and salt; beat in sour cream, the beaten egg, and vanilla. Add sliced peaches. Pour mixture into unbaked pie pastry.

And here is an easy peach dumpling recipe:

3 C. fresh sliced Peaches Or canned
2 C. Water
1 C. Sugar (less if peaches are in syrup)?
Combine first 3 ingredients in 3 qt saucepan. Bring to a boil

1 C. Bisquick mix
1/4 C. firmly packed brn sugar
1/2 C. milk
2 Tablespoons melted or liquid shortening
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
combine ingredients, stirring lightly. Drop batter from tablespoon on hot peach mixure. Reduce heat, cover tightly with lid, cook 15 min without lifting cover. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.Serves 6 to 8

Bake at 400° for 12 minutes. Reduce heat to 350° and bake 30 minutes longer. Remove from oven then increase heat to 400°.

Combine topping ingredients until crumbly; sprinkle over pie. Continue to bake pie at 400° for 10 minutes longer.

Ooh! This is fun. A "State of the Garden" chain.

Fall lettuce, spinach and turnips all sprouted and taking off. Still harvesting Swiss chard - boy I love that stuff! and so pretty, the variety I have has golden yellow stems. I may plant some in the flower gardens next year. Starting to pick second crop of carrots, but they're not very sweet. I'm feeding them to the dogs mostly, along with slicing in salads.

Zucchini - well who knew! Well, I guess most of you did, but I'm a newbie. I had 3 plants and actually removed one to give the tomatos some room to breathe. Production has slowed down, but still harvesting a couple a week.

Acorn squash seems to be ripe already. It's when you can't get your fingernail into the skin near the stem, right? Then the mystery squash (or is a gourd) is growing quite large. I guess I'll use the same criteria to pick this and then see what I got. Friends gave me the plant and because my acorns hadn't sprouted I stuck it in.

I planted seeds of a Charentais melon, which like the acorn squash refused to show their head, so I picked up a crenshaw melon. Now both have fruit ripening and I'm crossing my fingers I get to taste some.

Tomatos are amazing. 9 fruits bigger (some much bigger) than my fist on the Black tomato, along with a lot of smaller fruits. Over 25 tomatos on the Bush Celebrity. Will start harvesting those soon and making squash.

More peppers to pick, and about Rosa Bianca eggplants that I should be able to harvest soon.

Corn is done, potatos yet to harvest, but I think I will pull one plant to see if we can get some new potatos.

Herbs, well, I guess my idea of tucking them in amongst everything else was a little misguided. They're still there, but buried!

On the flower side, I planted my new perennial bed this weekend. Have a few open spots for Plant Swap finds! But I think I may need to extend my other flower garden! Shady garden has filled out well. So well in fact I'm going to have to decide what to keep of the volunteers that I moved in their this spring - vinca, sweet woodruff, columbine, snow on the mountain (will definately go), some sort of sedum.

All in all, quite a successful first season I think. I'm already thinking about next years vegetable garden!

Oops!! the last two lines of my last post are for the first recipe!!
J.
Maybe I should post a good soup recipe for swiss chard??

okay:
three minced or finely chopped garlic cloves
half a medium sized onion (I use brown or yellow), chopped
one or half of one Anaheim pepper (or green bell for a more mild spice)
salt/pepper to taste preference
1-2 tablespoons olive oil

add top ingredients to sauce pot, heat until onions are translucent.

half or 3/4 green cabbage, chopped into large-ish portions
two new potatoes, medium sized, choped
two zucchinis or one green and one yellow, chopped
a couple handfuls green beans, fresh or frozen but not canned
cut kernels of of one ear of corn or half bag frozen corn, not canned
six stalks chard (or kale) de-stemmed and cut but not too tiny
and
16oz Imagine No-Chicken Broth (or the broth you like) or more depending on how big it gets!

I also sometimes add: two Tofurkey Italian sausages, chopped or sliced
and sometimes add beans from a can, either white or "soup beans" If they come from a can, rinse thoroughly and add a minute before turning heat off.

for me, chard and olive oil make my soups taste buttery and if I miss the meat-stock, well, the combo of the two flavours makes up for it...
yay!

I never said anything about my flowers. I planted about 8-10 iris rhizomes last month that I got from Schreiners. They've settled in and have begun growing new leaves. I'm always happy with Schreiners irises.

I replaced my dead Sensation lilac with a new one. It's little bitty, no higher than six inches, but it looks healthy. It'll just be a while before it becomes a privacy fence.

I also planted two new peonies, Avalanche and Shirley Temple. I seem to have much better luck planting things like that in fall rather than in spring.

I picked up about a dozen more whole, unblemished peaches from under the tree tonight. I might think about next year just suspending a net under the tree. I see so many once beautiful peaches lying spoiled on the ground. Not that I don't have plenty of peaches.

I had one of my peaches last night, and frankly it was kind of a disappointment. It really wasn't that sweet. Is there such a thing as baking peaches, like there are baking apples, and pie cherries?

Oh Lilacs, that must have been so disappointing. But maybe like you say, they will be "bakers", and be absolutely delicious in pies and such!

I had a similar disappointment with my corn. I loved the description of it in the seed catalog (a hybrid of sweet and indian corn), but for the most part it wasn't very sweet, and the ones that looked more like indian corn were kind of mushy, chewy... I don't even know how to describe the texture. So that was a let down for me.

tomatoes really produced this year and thebeets and summer squash! Beans, carrots, cukes and peppers didn't do so well. Aphid problems on cukes & peppers. Too hot for beans? 94 days of over 90 degrees and 5 over 100 this summer. Broke all kinds of records. And less than 1/2 inch of rain.

Summer Squash Casserole
2# summer squash cut into 1 inch pieces
3/4 c fresh bread crumbs
4 Tbs melted butter
1/2 c onion
2 eggs lightly beaten
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 Tbs sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cook squash 10 minutes covered with water until tender. Drain. Combine bread crumbs and butter. Set aside 4 Tbs for topping. Add all other ingredients. Pour into greased 1 1/2 quart baking dish. Top with extra crumbs. Bake 1 hour. (Leftovers can be frozen)

Too hot for beans, Margaret? I don't know about here but the 3rd planting is just sitting there and sitting there . . .

North Idaho was not nearly as hot as just over the hill in your neck of the woods. That's rather unusual - we even got twice as much Summer rain (whoopdedoo). Montana did indeed have a record-setting year.

We've left the bean plants from the 1st and 2nd seeding much against my inclinations. Not only does this make it more difficult for weeding those last remaining invaders (which will go to seed now if given half a chance) but the red spider mites love these veggies more than just about any other in the garden.

These modern varieties of snap beans were developed for machine harvesting. That means, one shot at producing a crop - one pass thru the field to machine harvest. We may as well just sit down on an upturned bucket, pull the plant, pick the beans, and toss what's left in the compost. It takes them forever to kick out a few more pods.

I'm not talking about the pole beans, which just keep sending out more tendrils at the top with more flowers and more beans.

One thing about the beans is that they can produce during Autumn rains and cool temperatures. Everything else shuts down - zucchini growth can be measured in millimeters - but, the green beans always surprise me.

digitS'

I have an apple tree!

I was out in my yard checking on my plants, and I strolled over to an area I don't go to too often because it's entirely weed choked and I haven't gotten to it yet. I knew there was a small tree there with a cement tree ring around it, but I never paid much attention to it.

I looked over at it, and actually jumped in surprise. It was covered in green apples. Quite a few of the apples were on the ground, courtesy of the squirrels, I'm sure. But it still had a lot on the tree. I don't know what kind they are, or if they ever turn red. Neither this tree nor my peach tree produced fruit last year. A late freeze must have killed the blossoms. The apples are small, but maybe that's because it's a small tree (maybe 6-8 feet high), or maybe they just haven't finished growing yet.

Absolutely cool! Now I just have to remember to keep them away from my potato harvest.

Oooh, what a fun thread! I love new recipes! Jclepine, I have a rather dumb question. Are you using the stalk part, or the leafy part in that recipe? I grew 'Bright Lights' swiss chard for the first time this year, but didn't actually eat it. Leaf miners ruined most of it, and the couple of leaves I tasted were bitter. I thought it was pretty though, all of the different colored stalks mixed together.

Here's my state of the garden address:

Carrots - harvested a few, still have some that are ready to harvest, and a late planting that is just starting to get some leafy growth going.

Cucumbers - producing 2 or 3 a week, but production slowed by what looks like powdery mildew. My son really wanted to make homemade pickles, so I think I will plant more next year. These were the bush type.

Peppers - horrible! There are half a dozen plants in the veggie patch, and I haven't been able to harvest a single pepper on any of them. Some have blossoms that fall off. One produces peppers that develop rotten spots before they are ripe, one had a pepper on it that was bitten off and left on the ground by some animal. The only hope seems to be the ones in pots on the porch. There are a couple with small peppers on them that look pretty healthy, so we'll have to wait and see on those.

Pumpkins - planted way too many. I had no idea there would be 100% germination, LOL! They threatened to take over earlier this summer, but powdery mildew has slown them down a bit. There are over a dozen pumpkins which look pretty close to ripe to me. BTW, how do you know when to harvest them? The only thing that is weird to me, is that these were supposed to be 'Jack B. Little' pumpkins, and most of them are about the size of small pie pumpkins. Only one vine is producing the tiny decorative ones that they are supposed to be. The seeds were given to me, and I am wondering if I should have bought fresh seed.

Onions - the tops are still the size of the green onions you buy at the grocery store. I dug one up, and the bottom was about the size of a shallot. Should I give them more time? The tops don't seem to be getting any bigger, so I am not sure I will get any onions from them.

Beans - this was probably my biggest garden failure this year. I planted beans at least six times, had a very poor germination rate. Or at least I thought I did, but many of the ones that did come up, quickly died of some kind of wilt. The ones that have survived to maturity, are producing a little, but have a bad case of what I think is powdery mildew, or something else that causes the leaves to die. I am only getting a half a dozen beans at a time, so it takes several days to accumulate enough for one meal. I know Johnny's Selected Seeds sells bean seeds that are treated with something that is resistant to fungus, etc. Has anyone tried these? What else can I do to prevent this next year?

Okay, I read what I have written so far, and it sounds rather depressing, but it is my first year to try a vegetable garden, and I just know that next year will be better!

On a more positive note, my perennial beds are doing very well. Lots of things still blooming - coreopsis, gaillardia, echinaceas, solidago 'Fireworks' is just starting to put on a show, sedum 'Autumn Joy', achilleas are still going, asclepia tuberosa, agastache 'Apache Sunset' (hummers LOVE it), mums are covered with buds, and the rudbeckia is also about to bloom, dianthus knappii is reblooming a bit, and the cosmos 'Ladybird mix' (yes, I know this one's an annual) is threatening to take over.

I have gardening fever at the moment. I moved a bunch of stuff around today, and still have more rearranging planned. It's like a giant game of musical chairs, but instead of trying to beat everyone else to a chair when the music stops, I am trying to beat the first frost date.

Oh, my mistake...I am using the leaves. I remove most of the stalk and just leave a tiny bit...the part that is thin can stay, but the rest is to tough for my liking. I'll bet the stalks make a great stock, though. I've been doing so much composting lately that I haven't made my own stock since I've been up here!

We harvested our first potatoes yesterday! They were red ones, still kind of in the new potato stage, and very yummy!

This was fun especially for Steve. For whatever reason, potatoes are the one veg that he really gets into (growing, not eating - he loves eating them all).

So I held back the plants and he did the digging. We pulled up one plant completely, and another we just lifted and took a few potatoes to have enough for our meal. Do you think it will be alright and the tubers we left will continue to grow?

You are right at the end of the season, Alice. Growing on may not be at all possible.

An Idaho potato specialist has told me that stealing new potatoes in early Summer stresses the plants so that they often don't recover enuf for further growth. She suggests just pulling plants for new potatoes. Don't know, never done a comparison and have played it both ways.

To toughen the potato skins for safer handling and storage, you can cut the potato vines off about 2 weeks before harvest. Back when I had lots of spuds, I once used a lawn mower.

Soooo, who is this Steve and what do we need to know about him for our own protection??

another Steve's digits

Are potato plants like mama cats? They know when one of their kittens is missing and stress out until they find it? ;-)

I guess I'll be ok if they don't grow any more... it would just be nice if they "stored" where they are so we can pick more later this week. That should work I think!

As for mowing the potatoes... Well Steve, I think my plants would incapacitate anything short of a tractor! Those vines were about 5 feet long when we pulled them up to get at the ground.

I plucked the last peach on Sunday. Now I'm trying to keep up with processing them. It's hard on weeknights. I come home tired and just want to go to bed, but of course there's bunches of stuff that I have to do first.

The potato plants look quite hearty. Of my little fall transplant brassica, three look like they'll make it, but one Packman broccoli looks like it's taken too much insect damage to pull through. I found SLUGS in my raised bed the other day! Slugs! How did they get in there? Fly? I didn't even know what they were until I saw them moving, homing in on a small broccoli leaf. I expected them to be bigger. These were barely the size of my first thumb joint.

Time to bury a cup of Coors Lite in the raised bed, I guess.

The lettuce and carrots are growing big, and a couple of the marigolds are in bloom. Some spinach sprouts are coming up. I've noticed some leaf miner damage, so it's time to hit them with Pyola again.

The zucchini are blooming like crazy, but I guess it's still "no grrls allowed." Sigh. I so wanted to make zucchini bread. And my boss has been dropping hints about how she loves peach pie, zucchini bread, and Roma tomatoes. :-)

The garlic is all processed and in little net bags. I still want to dry some and pickle some others.

I ordered a blender/smoothie maker, and a fruit wine making kit. That ought to help fill my days as an unemployed writer.

Lilacs,
We have slugs in the one fully shaded area we have. We went to Ace and asked for Sluggo. "Oh, we don't carry anything for slugs, no one really gets slugs in Colorado." Hah!! Then I tried another place, "Slugs, here? No, not in Colorado." Okay, so I guess I have to make the trip into town to go to McGuckins...but if they look at me like I'm crazy, I'm coming back with some of my slug-filled strawberries and then ...
anyway, good luck with getting rid of them :)

Uh huh, sure, we don't get slugs. I'm taking pictures of the two inch long ones next time I see one.

And we also get snails.

These raised beds are in full sun, but maybe the slugs were using the brassicas as shade. I've seen a lot of insect damage in that bed, but I was blaming it on grasshoppers.

Garden update:

Tomato flower buds, no tomatoes.

Lots of testosterone-laden zucchini flowers, no zucchinis.

Two big cauliflower plants and one big broccoli plant, no heads.

Melon plants are growing. It would take a miracle to get melons this year. Or a heck of a lot of sudden global warming, which I DON'T want to see.

Now for the good news.

I still have a refrigerator stuffed to the gills with peaches, which I'm determined to process THIS WEEKEND.
I've harvested 11 windfall apples. Apparently they don't ever turn anything but green. Might be enough for a cobbler.

I have a lot of lettuce growing, and some carrots, and about five spinach plants.

The potatoes are all doing well. Even the Carola is sprouting, which is strange. It sprouted with the rest of the potatoes last spring, but barely got up above the soil before it died. Nothing happened for three months, and now it's growing.

I have actually harvested two tiny snow pea pods from my plants. Next year I might trellis them on one side of a raised bed to shade the brassica from the afternoon sun.

The large Brussels sprout plant is growing sprouts. They're almost pea size now.

The fall brassica seedlings are still hanging in there except for one Packman broccoli, which is pretty thoroughly bug-eaten.

And there you have it. I have a ton of stuff to plant, a couple Buddleias still from the swap, a blueberry bush, and bunches of garlic.

At least it's warm today. Monday the cold hits. My poor plants!

Addendum:

The tomato plant, the Black Plum, that's in the sun, is actually blooming! And I'm pretty sure I saw a female bud on my Parthenon zucchini.

Yay!

Lilacs, a note on pickling garlic - make sure you have all of the windows open. I made the Persian sugar pickled garlic and the smell when it was cooking was so bad I should have had a gas mask. Monday will be three weeks since they were pickled so we'll see how they turned out.

With the peaches, you can make a peach pie filling and freeze them in Ziplock bags in pie pans so all you have to do is make a crust and throw in the pie-shaped filling. Make sure you use Ever Fresh or Fruit Fresh when you're processing your peaches to keep them from turning brown.