Death in the garden

It's that time of year where things start wrapping up - and where a lot of gardeners are probably sick of the garden anyhow...  While I can't say I'm sick of tomatoes (have hardly had any), there's still plenty on the vine.  I just don't know that I'd want to eat many of them.  Check out the nasty brown wrinkly bits on that one near the center - that's what's happened to a lot of the tomatoes this year.

Many of those Opalka paste tomatoes, plus my Roma tomatoes, haven't had that brown scarring/rot - they just haven't ripened up great.  I've gone ahead and cleaned, halved, and frozen as many as I could, and will continue to do so....hopefully we'll have some sauce or salsa cooked up in the coming months.

More death in the garden - here's some of the corn.  Man, when this stuff goes, it goes fast!  I need to get out there and rip them out or chop them off at the base, and then bundle them up for fall display.  Hey - gotta try to get SOMETHING out of them, right?  I wonder if I'll find the remaining corn ears have had the kernels dry out and, if so, if I should pass them on to Brett's mom for her squirrels.

And finally - I haven't had any luck with pumpkins this year, but the gourds sure made an attempt.  As you can see, the vines are dying off early, and these gourds didn't get as big as they normally do.  These guys were COVERED in squash bugs (like a couple dozen per gourd!), so I dusted them with some organic Garden Dust and, gee, they were gone the next day.  A few more showed up....but hopefully I can wipe out a big chunk of the population.  No pumpkins and only a handful of gourds - the Halloween decorations aren't going to have much from the garden this year.  :-(