I am so happy for you!!! That is exciting news for a canner or any gardener who likes fresh veggies. :)

I brought in about 15 lbs of tomatoes last night. They're destined to be tomato sauce as soon as ripe enough. Can't leave them on the vines to fully ripen because of the birds and other critter from the woods.

I planted a second planting of crooknecks hoping to avoid the SVB which are common as crabgrass here. So far so good. I may actually harvest a few soon. The lack of rain is becoming a real problem to gardeners here.

Zabby,
Just think if you had pickling cukes growing out there.. After 8 days, the plants would shut down and produce oversized yellow, and tough 'watermelon sized' cukes.

For the various crab grass, chickweed, and purslane, here, I bought a big powerful propane fired burner torch that I used to burn down a lot of weeds and crabgrass (bought from Northern Tool), right down to the soil level. Its important to get the weed seeds they are now producing. Some of my burning came close to some blueberry bushes, as well as my Siberian honeyberries, which are not very impressive anyway. I tried using organic weed killers like clove oil, citric, acetic, cinnamon oils, but they don't work very well when the weeds are a foot tall and out of control. At least if a good plant gets burned a little, it will recover the next year.

Here its just the opposite lately, 2.5 inches of rain in 45 minutes. Heavy rain every afternoon since last week Monday. Even NY city people saw a funnel cloud a few days ago. Also, hail was appearing in several local areas. My garden is water logged and the cuke plants are sowing signs of dieing soon due to powdery mildew on most of the leaves .

My first Sungolds also ripened a few days ago. I've had one ripe Galina's (yellow cherry). Lots of summer squash - Black Beauty zucchini, Striata Italiana zucchini, Costata Romanesco zucchini, and Zephyr yellow squash. I decided to try some unusual varieties of squash this year and I have to say - the Striata and Costata really are better than "normal" zucchini. They have lovely striped skins and their skin is much more tender. Their flavor is wonderful as well. And I had to get the Zephyr yellow squash as one of my dogs is named Zephyr :) I also have tons of beans and the darn things just drive me nuts. I can NEVER keep up with them, no matter how hard I try. I'm still harvesting more than a pound of raspberries every day. My shallots are done, my onions are looking good, and I think we'll have our first ears of corn this week! Cucumbers are producing well but unfortunately my slicing cukes were all eaten by cutworms. The pickling cukes are doing well and we will just use them for fresh eating as well.

I made stuffed zucchini blossoms yesterday _ I figured we certainly weren't going to miss the fruit if I picked the flower. They were stuffed with a goat cheese and basil mixture, sprinkled with salt and olive oil, and baked. Very good.

I love when dinner is decided by a wander through the garden.