Sounds like the garden is moving into the fall season nicely. The broccoli and cabbage should benefit once the temperatures cool down, and it’s good that the seeds are already in the ground. It’s also nice to hear that the pears and persimmons are coming along. The late tomatoes and cucumbers seem to be nearing the end of their season, which is normal after the heat and heavy rain.

Thanks Sarah, hope your garden is growing well also. I've wrapped up planting everything now (the fall crops) but have had to cover the young broccoli and cabbage trsansplants with some shade since it's still too hot here. That's normal practice nowadaze. Hope to get some rain over the next 2 days to get it all off to a nice start.

Just 2 daze until Sept but it still feels like July here with upper 90's for most of this coming week. I'll need to keep the transplants shaded longer than expected and watered well since no rain is in the forecast. The other seeds have popped up but they should be able to handle the heat better than the transplants. Picking Pears now daily as they slowly get a blush of yellow. Hope autumn temps arrive early this year.

It's now September here and we hit 90F again today, but finally got some rain. We had gotten pretty much no rain for about 6 weeks, then got an inch a couple of days ago. We need more but I'll take it and be thankful.

I'm canning shelled horticultural beans and the tomatoes are just starting to ripen. The cabbage is becoming sauerkraut and the cucumbers succumbed to the heat a couple of weeks ago. Raccoons ate the sweet corn and I've been fighting with groundhogs all summer. Potatoes are doing well and the butternut squash looks like it's starting to turn color. I picked the first cantelope yesterday, a bit too ripe but still good enough to eat. Sweet potato vines look awesome, I can only hope there is something going on under all those vines. No peaches, cherries or apples, the late frosts got all of those, but the grapes are amazing me this year, there are so many. I canned some juice and I'll make jelly, but what else can you do with a bucket full of grapes? They are seedless Concord and Canadice, so I just mixed them together, made juice and canned it. It's good.

Annie