Start of summer canning

The first large quantity of produce to come out of the garden was green beans, zucchini and summer squash. The kids always got the unwanted job of snapping the ends off the beans. To make this a little more fun they use scissors. We were able to bottle 20 quarts of regular beans and 7 pints of dilly beans.

Spencer was my main zucchini and summer squash shredder. He'd then load them into the food saver bags in one cup servings so they'd be ready for zucchini muffins or cookies. We probably have 40 bags in the freezer.

Last year we had no plants due to the much disliked squash bug. So this yearI followed every wives tail out there. I crushed egg shells and sprinkled them on the ground all around the base of the plants, then sprinkled 7 dust on top of the egg shells. Finally, we phyically turned over each leaf every three days and squashed the yucky bugs with gloved hands. I do believe these tricks worked to at least keep the plants healthy enough to produce. Last year, we had so many squash bugs that Ter had to take a blow torch to them. I should have taken a picture. It was classic.

I guess 10 plants is a bit overkill, but at least I had something to share with the neighbors.

Ter was in charge of pest control this year. This has probably been the most frustrating part of the garden this year. The constant infestation of unwanted bugs. Aphid- never have gotten rid of them, squash bugs- we kept them at bay for awhile but now seem to be coming back and last but not least, blight- not quite sure if we really had them, but something is turning all the leaves brown and curly. We did everything in our power to take care of the nasty critters then prayed a lot.

I decided not to follow some professional advice from the nursery guy which was to yank out anything that had blight on it. If I had, I wouldn't have gotten any zucchini, squash or tomatillo's, and these bushes have been my best producers.