Fresh Produce Coming Along

Our first harvest...a Cucumber!
J found it yesterday evening after the pretty good t-storm we got with lots of needed rain - but also lots of UNneeded winds.
Some of the short-sunflowers and corn stalks laid over, but I don't think we completely lost any of those. Did lose one squash plant, somehow.

This is a view of the squash/cucumbers and large sunflowers. Most of those sunflowers are over 6 feet tall!
The big empty dirt area had been planted with onions and peppers, but sadly none of them made it. Think the birds or squirrels made off with the seeds.

These are some of the gourd plants that survived the initial planting; inside the wooden cage thing is some cherry tomato plants, and then there's some other tomato plants, and corn.

Another view of the cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, corn...I think there's some okra in the somewhere - and my neighbor's big 4-wheel-drive truck.

Looks like we're going to have a bumper crop of tomatoes this year. Kevin asked me could we make our own ketchup, which was really funny because I had just looked up diy ketchup on the internet yesterday.

And finally, remember the Pumpkins?
I can't find (probably didn't post) where we (and by we, I mean Johnny) built a planter box next to the backyard fence and hung wire on the fence. The idea being I wanted to grow a vertical pumpkin garden...Up, rather than out on the ground.
Started off great, got three plants to take (out of like, twelve I tried to grow), and they grew up along the wire like they were supposed to.

But then, we got new neighbors on the other side of the fence. These neighbors have a couple little future criminals...I mean children...and a mean Pitbull dog.
First off, they hadn't even been moved in a week and the little future criminals had already tore several wooden slats off the fence. Luckily it happened to be behind where we'd nailed up the wire or else the little shts probably would've been over here in our yard wreaking havoc, too.
Several feet on down the fence, they chained up their Pitbull dog. The dog ended up tearing even more slats out of the fence than the little vandals.

Neighbor guy told me he was going to fix the fence, and he did, eventually, but moved the Pitbull over so now it's chained right on the other side of my pumpkins. Anytime we go down there it jumps up and runs to the fence, so the chain rattles and the fence moves; you'd swear a monster was coming after you. And it's snarls sounds like one, too!

We still go to the garden, but neither of us, I guess, are brave enough to get close enough to the fence to be able to nail up more wire and hang the pumpkins where I wanted them to go.

Oh well. Either I'll grow them on the ground, or I guess this will just be one more story in my history of pumpkin-growing-failures, lol.

(Scary dog at tore up fence)