The vines shake before the fight --moonflower and trombone squash

It finally happened-- my 40 ft trombone squash vine and 20 foot moonflower met and began there wrestling match for dominance of the fall garden:

The squash made the first grab, and a couple of days later the moonflower went for a reverse pin:

My simple wire fence is the perfect place to let these two heavyweight vines battle. Tonight will be the coolest night of the fall so far, with lows in the 40's, which may finally slow down these two tropicals.

Trombone squash still going!

When all all the other squash have succumbed to fungus the trombone squash is still going. It is a bit ragged near the roots, but thirty feet away, at the growing end, it is still bright green and making more fruit:

So Happy Separate -- morning glories and pole beans

As summer ends the morning glories are finally blooming -- this season not sharing a structure with the beans like last year (a bad idea, the beans were overwhelmed!).
I have grown many different colors and patterns of morning glories, and they are all beautiful, but the blues are my favorites. Last year I grew a swirling white and blue variety, but this year I went back to the classic 'Heavenly Blue'.  They look so clean and fresh in the ragged late summer garden.

Nearby, happy alone, is a  planting of 'Goldmarie' pole bean:

And also nearby is a new variety, the productive and tender (even when large) 'Rattlesnake' pole bean, which in this picture has escaped it's poles and is climbing up the adjoining 10 foot tall Sunchokes:

Here's the  beans I picked yesterday - a mix of both pole varieties and a few 'Dragon's Tongue' bush beans. They were  delicious cooked five minutes (until  just tender) over a bed of mashed 'Yukon Gold' potatoes (my own, of course).

The harvest continues, and fall cleanup

Many gardeners (and I know because I used to be one) let the late summer garden get ragged. They harvest the fruit, but don't clean up the remains of the plants for weeks, and sometimes not until spring. This looks awful and can harbor disease.
This year I'm working hard to be different. In the morning I mostly harvest, and in the afternoon I remove dying or dead plants and compost them on the other side of the house, in an isolated pile just for suspect foliage. I also plant late summer flowers, including moonflowers, morning glories and Jerusalem artichokes to keep my fall garden cheerful.
Here are crops from the Thursday morning picking-- I had the day off and could take my time, what a joy!

The Mortgage Lifters were dying back, probably because of several different fungus infections. I pulled them up -- check out those roots!-- and harvested all the tomatoes, then brought them into the garage to ripen. These are the fruits of just one plant, and I had four more in this bed. I could have tried to spray fungicide, but I was ready to let go of these plants, who had done their jobs well.

I dug the last patch of potatoes-- Yukon Gold.

And I picked lots of other fuit to keep the plants producing, including trumpet squash, which is still growing when all other squash has succumbed to fungus!

Carrots:

And  peppers, beans and raspberries.

Here's a shot of the cleaned up garden this morning:

Tomatoes everywhere -- Celebrity and Mortgage Lifter in abundance!

What a year this has been for tomatoes here in southeastern Massachusetts. Here are pictures of the tomatoes I had on hand yesterday. These were ripening in the dining room on the sideboard:

And in the garage, sharing company with some Red Zeppelin onions:

And in the wheelbarrow,  stripped off four plants I'd just pulled up (they were  yellowing and dying back).

I sorted through all the ripe Celebrity tomatoes and blanched and froze a batch.

Here's how I did it. First I cored then, then I put them in rolling water for about a minute:

The skins slipped off easily after this hot bath, and I laid the whole skinned and cored tomatoes out on a sheet pan to freeze:

The next morning I stacked the frozen tomatoes into a sturdy rubbermaid container. I'm looking forward to a winter of delicious tomato sauce and chili!

Meanwhile, we are eating fresh Mortgage Lifter tomatoes morning, noon and night. We're not sick of them yet, but there are a lot more on the vine. When it gets to that point, I bring them to work and share them with my customers and co-workers. Most people don't want squash, but they are happy to get a vine ripened heirloom tomato.

August video tour of the kitchen garden

I'm planning on picking lots of tomatoes and basil to make sauce, so I shot a video tour of the garden yesterday while the tomatoes were still on the vine and the basil still flowering with the moonflower.

Moonflowers, finally!