Finally getting some good garden news!

My cucumbers are doing brilliantly!  I picked two today and had them for lunch, along with some of my grape tomatoes.  I'm trying to anticipate when enough of them will be big enough for pickling.  At the moment I'm aiming for sometime between Friday and Tuesday (understanding that Weekends Don't Count.  I can't get anything done on weekends) for making the first batch of pickles!

My Roma tomatoes are finally starting to turn red - and so far the blossom-end rot is still at a manageable level!  I plan on turning these into tomato sauce, so I'm going to experiment with freezing them as they come ripe so that I'll have enough for a big batch I can put up.  I figure it's mostly the texture that suffers when you refrigerate/freeze tomatoes, and I'm going to be cooking them anyway, so it may not really make much difference in the long run.  Anyone who's tried this and has an opinion please chime in!

In other better news, the Garden Beetle season seems to mostly be over, and my herbs are trying hard to stage a valiant comeback!  Of my nine purple basil plants I think I truly lost three of them.  The other six look much like this one, so I may yet get pink, basil-scented vinegar this year!