Melon

Here is my one good melon. Unfortunately I had to pick it before it was 100% ripe. There was a dent in the rind (just above my thumb) that was getting bigger and softer, so I decided to harvest it before it got any worse.

Here is what it looks like inside. Not too shabby! It seems that the dent was an area of thin rind that was allowing the melon under it to dry out or something. Its wasn't rotten or moldy at all. The flavor was just OK, though. It wasn't as sweet as I'd like. I suspect that was because I picked it before it was fully ripe. Sadly, this is probably both the first and the last melon of the year since the vine is dying back.
On the other hand, the pepper plants are definitely NOT dying back. They are going crazy. Here is one of the bell pepper plants covered in peppers.
This is the largest of the peppers I've harvested to date. It would actually fit right in with the grocery store peppers. In the background you can see the rest of the recent harvest. The last cucumber of the season, 1.25 lbs of beans, 3/4 lb of broccoli, and a small amount of snow peas.

Its (unofficially) Fall

Night time temps are dipping into the low 50's or even lower. Some of the daytime highs aren't even hitting 70 degrees. That hasn't stopped the garden, though. The beans continue to grow, and while I was gone for a little while they overtook one of Jaime's herb pots. The beans have tons of flowers and little beans on them, so at least they're being productive while being annoying.

The corn looks like its ready to be bundled into a front-porch decoration.
The potatoes are somehow still going strong. What you see here is actually half of the potato plants. I grew early season red potatoes that finished and died off in june. Since I had some potatoes in my root cellar, I just left them in the ground. Now the long season Kennebec potatoes have totally overgrown a huge area and show no signs of slowing down. I can't even get to the early potatoes without damaging the greenery, so I've just decided to wait till it all dies back. Also in the picture below is a random broccoli plant that is just now growing its first head.
After being away for a while there was a good amount of stuff that was ripe/overripe and needed to be harvested. Broccoli, peas, beans, and two kinds of peppers. There are tons of Cayennes that are ripe also, but I'm leaving them on the plant as long as I can so that I will have a maximum number of ripe peppers at the end of the season for making hot sauce.
After harvesting the onions at the beginning of July, I replanted the area with various greens and some radishes. Seen below is one of the radish plants that is neither bolting nor growing a radish bulb. It is just growing like crazy instead. Radishes are supposed to be easy and quick, but I have not had good luck with them.
I had a viewer request for a picture from further back showing the whole garden. This is about as far back as I could get. This shows about 90% of the garden. What is left of the three sisters is against the garage to the left, peppers, broccoli, and brussels sprouts in the middle, pototoes on the near right side, and greens and peas in the back right.

Its about time for an update

For various reasons I haven't been giving my garden much attention lately. I finally got around to doing a bunch of needed work on it today. One of the things I did was thin out the carrots that I planted in July for (hopefully) fall harvest. These thinnings, while small, look promising. There are actually little baby carrots there!

For the last month or so, I noticed that there was a "volunteer" cucurbit growing out of one of the compost piles. Its not in the way of anything (its in a mostly shaded area), so I've been letting it grow. It has started to flower and by the looks of one of the female flowers, it seems to be a zuchinni plant. We'll see if it actually makes any zuchinnis before it gets too cold out. Here is said plant.
This area is a bunch of greens that I planted in July and August for fall picking. They are growing very well and need to be thinned out. There is lettuce, arugula, pak choi, and rapini in there.
Here is the pile of bean vegetation that grew up a couple of wooden stakes that I leaned against the garage. The stakes are 8', and the beans grew above that and up into the lilac bush. This variety is supposed to consistently grow beans all summer long. They certainly grew well all summer, but never produced a single bean. The crazy thing is that now they are covered in flower buds. I think they should have time to mature into beans before it gets too cold.
Meanwhile, the other bean variety has produced beans all summer. I'm not sure how I feel about the taste or texture of them, but they are productive. It turns out that if you let the beans keep growing without picking them, they can get huge.
Its always tough to get a good picture of the peppers since they are shrouded in foliage, but I was doing some re-staking of the pepper plants that are currently over-burdened with peppers and I was able to get a reasonable shot of the two cayenne pepper plants. There are (quite literally) dozens of cayennes on each plant and they keep growing more of them. I planned on making hot sauce out of them, but I may have more than I know what to do with.