Harvest update

Here's the latest from the evening trip to the garden:

• Tomatoes are coming on strong. I'm going to do a big pick tomorrow to make sauce to freeze. Thinking freezing versus canning to avoid hot stove and hot water and since we all have an extra freezer. Also, we can do a batch of sauce and freeze as we go instead of feeling like we need to do a huge batch for canning in one big effort.
  
• Picked the last three pumpkins as the squash bugs were on them pretty heavy. They can store in the basement until we want to use them. (come get a couple)
• Picked a couple ears of corn to see what they looked like. There are a bunch others that we should probably pick soon too.
• Picked a bunch of summer squash as well before they got too big.
• Picked a spaghetti squash. I understand these can be stored as well.
• There are a bunch of butternut squash on the vines too. Some are getting quite large!
• The kale we planted from seed is coming up nicely.
• The kidney beans should probably be uprooted and brought inside to dry sometime soon as we did with the Jacob's Cattle beans last week.
• Carrots should be brought inside to store as well. I'm thinking of bringing in some dirt from the garden to store them in. Or sand. I hear sand is good and might be more sterile...not sure why we need sterile, this might be old thinking.
• Harvested yet more broccoli. There is another nice head out there that should be harvested soon.
• Brussel sprouts are looking good, but should get bigger still.
• Tomatillos aren't filling their husks yet, not sure when/if this will happen. We can always harvest whenever, but my thinking was that we should wait until they're bigger.
  

The weeds are pretty tall right now. Thinking a good weed wacking is in order. We could just lay cardboard over our weeds and do the sheet mulching over these areas.

Next year we should certainly minimize pathways and put material over paths to block weeds. Also try to keep garden to a "waterable" area: one that one sprinkler can reach.

Also, we should have some organic sources of fertilizer on hand so we can side dress plants during the growing cycle. Plants will grow better when they get nutrition at key times in their development. We didn't do this for this tester season, but I bet if we did our harvests would be even stronger.