Pulled up the hot-pepper plant this morning, and tossed it on the compost heap. The jungle of weeds that nearly took over the box this year met the same fate: and so Garden 2006 is concluded.

The basil plant is still out there. Jennifer was talking about moving it to the ground next to the box, to see whether it would survive the winter, so I left it.

Some kind of critter had built a nest in the box: in one corner, something dug a hole and lined it with grass and gray fur. A squirrel, I suppose.

The competely withered & dead tomato plants somehow managed to produce two more mostly-ripe tomatoes yesterday, bringing the year’s total up to one hundred thirty-two.

We’re making a big batch of pasta sauce out of them.

I don’t know if I want to grow tomatoes next year. Maybe something we can harvest & eat with a minimum of preparation, something that won’t pile up in the kitchen while we figure out what to do with it all.

Twelve more tomatoes this evening. The plants are almost completely dead: dry, brittle & brown. There are still a few tomatoes left, but the critters have been eating them.

Jake & I also picked twelve hot peppers, 8½ of which were red.

It’s been a good year for gardening, but I think the growing season is just about over. Probably this weekend there will be a new yard-waste bag waiting for the free pickup (in October, I think).

Jake picked seventeen tomatoes yesterday morning, and I picked five more today: the year’s total is now one hundred eighteen. This year’s garden no longer qualifies as a failure.

We’re going to make a big batch of pasta sauce & freeze it for use this winter.

(Something’s been eating the tomatoes. I found three or four half-chewed ones in barrel #1 this morning. The leading suspect: squirrels.)

Just when I think the tomato plants have gone to their reward, another crop of vaguely straw-colored, almost ripe tomatoes appears.

This evening, Jake & I harvested twenty-five more. The year’s total: ninety-six.

I was going to pull up the plants this evening, but I think I’ll let them go a while longer. Maybe they’ll break a hundred.

Picked every ripe, almost-ripe, and might-someday-ripen tomato from both plants: sixteen, in all.

The year’s total: 71, which seems pretty good after all.

(I don’t think there will be any more tomatoes. As soon as I work up the necessary energy, I’m going to pull up both plants & stuff them into a yard-waste bag.)

Six more tomatoes this evening, smaller than before (golf ball sized vs tennis ball sized) and a bit cat-faced.

That’s fifty-five for the year, or 98¢ each.

I neglected to check the basil & hot peppers, so no update on them. Maybe tomorrow.

Five tomatoes yesterday, plus two ripe hot peppers. (The peppers were an impressively vivid shade of red.)

Those, plus four on Sunday, bring the total to 48. I don’t think there will be very many more: both plants are just about completely dead.

The basil is huge. Looking at it now, you’d never know that Japanese beetles had eaten most of it last month. I suppose we’ll have to harvest some before it goes all woody or something.

The pepper plant is covered with peppers, of varying sizes. Only the two ripe ones, so far. (They really stand out against all the green.)

Four more tomatoes last night: a little bigger, not so ugly, but the end is definitely near for both plants.

Total expenditures: $54.04

Tomatoes harvested: 39

That’s $1.39 per tomato. I suspect it would have been cheaper just to buy them at the grocery store.

Seven more tomatoes yesterday: small, lumpy & unevenly colored. (They still tasted good.)

Quite a few green tomatoes are still out there, in both barrels, but the plants are dying so quickly that I doubt they’ll ever ripen.

I’ve been lax about keeping count of the year’s tomato harvest, but I’m sure it’s below twenty-five.