Odds and Ends

This guy was already dead when I came across it in the yard, but I was so impressed with the colors I snapped a photo anyway.
Here is a mixture of some of the goodies still growing in the garden. I picked around 50 red tomatoes to give to my mother in-law, who is going to can some whole and make some juice with them. We are also loaded with yellow tomatoes and I'm giving them to anyone I come across, but we know not to plant so many of them next year since they do not can as well.
I pulled the weeds that had covered the Brussels sprouts I planted in July. I don't know much about what to expect from these plants. Some of the leaves have been heavily chewed. I actually sprayed them with an insecticidal soap. I also discovered about 10 little worms all curled up inside the very center of one of the plants. I couldn't believe how packed they were in there.
I thought it was neat to see the old corn and the new corn that is just coming in. I was really worried that the new stuff would not fill out since we've had so little rain, but I had some tonight and it was delicious! I also picked the rest of the butternut squash that you see in this picture. A couple of them were spoiled where some little critters had dug into them. Man there is some gross stuff hanging out in the garden sometimes.
Clay and I finally planted some fall crops. Here is a mixture of red and green leaf lettuce and some mesclun mix. Then off to the left of these plants I put in some spinach, kale, and broccoli seed.

I've used the dehydrator twice. First a filled five trays with cherry tomatoes, which took about 1 and 1/2 days to finish. Then today I filled five trays with basil leaves and they started finishing in about 1 and 1/2 hours. I so have to rotate the trays. The bottom trays and the produce near the center of the dehydrator dry faster so I have to check on it pretty regularly to keep stuff from turning black.