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I know everyone can grow zucchini so it's nothing to brag about, but I think my two plants (in the same hill) are especially pretty this year. Maybe it's all the blossoms still putting on a show that impress me.
We've been eating them sliced and sauteed with onions and mushrooms with an egg on top for breakfast most every morning for a while now. Yum!
Here's my bed of slicing cucs. I thinned the bed down to four plants. Then two up and died on me before bearing fruit. They just withered and started to turn brown. I inspected them for insect damage but couldn't find any. The two remaining plants are producing about 55 pounds of slicing cucs a day. (Okay, maybe a little less than that.) I took ten cucs to a get together yesterday and wouldn't let anyone leave without taking at least one. They are soooo good and we eat a lot of them either cut into spears with a little salt or sliced and mixed with red onion, garlic salt, black pepper, dill weed and a smidge of mayo. We always miss them when the frost zaps the vines.
I planted three kinds of peppers in this bed and there was a time earlier this season when I didn't think any of them would get over 6" tall. But they did.
This is a sweet pepper, Antohi Romanian, an Eastern European frying pepper. They've always done really well for me yielding heavily. They are yellow turning both orange and bright red, but you can harvest them in the early yellow stage. You can't see them all but this plant has ten peppers on it.
We've never been much for hot, spicy foods but I know they are reputed to be good for us so for the first time this year, I've grown Cheyenne, a "warm" hot pepper which can be used when green, as they are now, or when they turn red. I've yet to harvest one to give it a try. (Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy. No kidding, I'm really afraid of them. I mean I'm supposed to wear protective goggles and gloves when I prepare them??)
I have serious doubt that these jack o' lantern pumpkins will make it this year. This is our largest one, about the size of a soccer ball. (Oh well, there's always orange spray paint.)
Unless we have an early killing frost, I think my Red Kuri squash will mature. This one shown here grows visibly bigger each day. Really.
How many green and yellow beans can two people eat? Like the peppers, my bean plants started so slowly this year, but have ended up giving us a bumper crop. I don't think I've ever had such a good crop of beans.
The green and red cabbage are huge, but a bit beat up by munching insects. They've been hard hit by critter damage this year and I've yet to harvest one to see if they are usable. I really must do that soon.
That's an overview of most of what's happening in the garden right now. Fall plantings are growing under shade cloth and I'm hoping they will give us fresh green goodness well into fall. I'll take the shade cloth off at some point and put cold frames on top of them to extend the season as much as I can.
Gardening a hard work, but I do so love doing it. This time of year I feel like a squirrel (or perhaps a big, ol' bear getting ready for hibernation) taking in the bountiful harvest and packing it away for the winter. What a great pay-off for your own labor!
Considering the crazy weather we've had this summer and the onslaught of insects, my garden has turned out better than I ever thought it would. We've recently had decent amounts of rain, too, which I'm sure has helped immeasurably.
Here's an aerial view of the raised beds taken from my perch in hubby's office. (Or hanging out of one of his windows actually. He kept asking me to please not fall out. Whadda guy!)
Some beds have been cleaned out already . . . hence the sparse look. The three beds that look like they have black covers on them are planted out with cool weather fall crops like broccoli, spinach, Swiss chard, kohlrabi, kale and lettuce and have shade cloth covers on them.
This is some lettuce I planted several weeks ago. The only reason it looks this good or could survive in the heat we've had is because of the shade cover. That stuff really works.
Do you see the bed of Jerusalem artichokes way down at the end of the third row of raised beds? They have to be nine feet tall. Still no sign of flowering out though.
A very sad looking potato patch. It got hit with blight pretty hard. Especially the two rows in the center.
This part of the field garden shows the strawberry patch in the foreground. Just yesterday we cut down all the strawberry plants so they'll have a chance to make strong, healthy, new growth before frost. Beyond that patch is my little pumpkin pie pumpkins. Then sunflowers past that. On the other side of the sunflowers (which you can't see) are jack o' lantern pumpkins.
Here we've got corn in the right corner with Red Kuri squash in front of that and then a line of cosmos. None of my flowers have done well this year. The foliage part of the cosmos grew weird, there were very few flowers and the flowers that bloomed were malformed. Very strange.
Ha! I was so eager for these nasturtiums. They were supposed to be a mix of ivory and maroon blooms. Do you see any maroon blooms? Me neither.
I think I've got a good crop of yellow storage onions coming along. The red onions look pretty good, too.
This is the same variety of cherry tomato I've planted for several years. But, golly-wumpus, this year they are gargantuan in size! About three or four times the size they usually are. What gives with that?
They are just now starting to ripen. We had our first one this weekend. It had absolutely no taste. Nope. None. Zip. Zilch. No taste. Ain't that a boot in the butt?
Okay, this is getting too long. I'll post more garden pictures tomorrow. Promise.
'Tis harvest season for the garden and you all know that doesn't leave a lot of hours for much of anything else. Seems I'm either out in the garden harvesting while trying to keep up with late season weeds or doing a little fall planting or, mostly, inside preserving like a crazy woman.
I'm not complaining because with all the wacky things we've all been experiencing with our gardens, I'm very grateful for anything the garden is giving me this year.
I've been managing to sit at the desk long enough to pay bills before they're due and sort the mail into stacks to be dealt with later, but am feeling more than a smidge bit of guilt for my lack of blogging and my inability to answer correspondence in a timely manner. (Yes, I need a flogging with a wet garden weed.)
We got one and 3/10ths of an inch of rain overnight and it's still coming down steadily. I so wish I could share this blessed rainfall with those of you still struggling through drought.
My first thought on this dark, drizzly, cozy morning (mmm, smell that coffee!) was to spend it at the desk in an effort to get caught up on everything that's been getting shoved to the "when I have time" pile. However, my dear husband who knows what I need more than I do (or am able to admit) has threatened to lock me in my quilt room or handcuff me to my recliner with a good book if I don't agree to do it on my own on this fine "inside" day. Yeah, I need a day of rest. Down time. Time out to re-energize and relax.
And that's what I'm going to do today. I may even have a second latte.
NOTE: I started to write this post around 8 o'clock this morning, but somehow got sidetracked. (I know none of you can imagine how this could happen!) Now here it is 3 p.m. and I'm finally getting it up.
* * * * * *
Looks as though those of us in this area can stop being concerned about drought! Around 4 a.m. this morning we had one heckuva rain storm that dropped 1" of rain on us. This has been happening frequently enough that we're finally getting well hydrated. I only wish those of you in other parts of the country were getting your share of the rain, too. I know it's desperately needed.
I had plans to pick three kinds of beans this morning and get them processed but the garden is so wet I'll not be doing that. Hoping the heavy rain didn't knock too many of the ripe raspberries off the plants last night. Once they're ripe, they come off so easily.
Our temp is only in the 70s (hooray!) but the sky is overcast and the humidity is high both inside and out. (In the above picture, I was trying to take a shot that showed the heaviness of the air, but I think a much more talented photographer than I am is needed for that.) When I wiped the table off this morning after breakfast, it was still wet a half hour later!
Yesterday most of the day was spent making juice concentrate. (Yep, I'm still on the homemade juice kick.) I made a single batch of blueberry concentrate and two batches of raspberry. Unless I end up with an over-abundance of blueberries, I think that's all I'll make this year until we find out exactly how far the concentrate goes and how much we consume over winter.
Glad to report I've moved out of my waking in the middle of the night routine and have been sleeping straight through. Last night I finished up the last batch of juice later than I would have liked and found myself hitting the wall and wanting to be flat out in bed before I wrapped up what needed to be done. I stumbled around for another hour or so before making it into bed. I have no idea how I did it, but apparently when I drew back the bed covers I pulled down the fitted bottom sheet also, and crawled in on top of the mattress pad. (That fitted bottom sheet is tight, too!) I had no idea I had done this until hubby came to bed and knew something didn't feel right. Good grief, that's one I'll wonder about for a long time!
Funny how itchy my fingers are to get those beans picked and processed, but I don't think it will be happening today. When I have a plan made, I've always had trouble changing horses. Don't know if that's a personality weakness or strength. So far I've used the day to get caught up with desk work . . . and there's always the disaster called my closet I could/should work on. And a couple hundred other non-garden related things to do. And I do have that Netflix video I could watch . . .
I've been awake the past two nights from about 1:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. Can I blame it on the (almost) full moon?
Tonight I am feelin' tired. My wagon is draggin'. (It's a produce wagon. Haha.)
'Tis the time of year when I begin to fear the garden and harvests from the garden are taking over my life.
I'm so grateful our house stays relatively cool inside. But it's way too hot outside.
It's so hot outside that I had to pace myself all day so I didn't pass out between the beans and squash.
Not much energy to expend, but things had to be done.
Currently blueberries need to be picked every other day.
Raspberries need to be picked every other day, sometimes every day.
I picked and processed shell peas again today. I may get one more picking and then they will be done.
I got the first picking of green beans today.
I could have/should have picked yellow beans this afternoon, but I ran out of time . . . and gas. Have I mentioned I'm tired? And it's so hot out there. I promised the yellow beans I'd get to them tomorrow.
After a hot shower and fresh jammies, I think I'll feel better. Maybe I'll even have enough energy to make my list for tomorrow . . . and crawl into bed. And sleep straight through the whole night. I hope.
We've been eating them sliced and sauteed with onions and mushrooms with an egg on top for breakfast most every morning for a while now. Yum!
Here's my bed of slicing cucs. I thinned the bed down to four plants. Then two up and died on me before bearing fruit. They just withered and started to turn brown. I inspected them for insect damage but couldn't find any. The two remaining plants are producing about 55 pounds of slicing cucs a day. (Okay, maybe a little less than that.) I took ten cucs to a get together yesterday and wouldn't let anyone leave without taking at least one. They are soooo good and we eat a lot of them either cut into spears with a little salt or sliced and mixed with red onion, garlic salt, black pepper, dill weed and a smidge of mayo. We always miss them when the frost zaps the vines.
I planted three kinds of peppers in this bed and there was a time earlier this season when I didn't think any of them would get over 6" tall. But they did.
This is a sweet pepper, Antohi Romanian, an Eastern European frying pepper. They've always done really well for me yielding heavily. They are yellow turning both orange and bright red, but you can harvest them in the early yellow stage. You can't see them all but this plant has ten peppers on it.
We've never been much for hot, spicy foods but I know they are reputed to be good for us so for the first time this year, I've grown Cheyenne, a "warm" hot pepper which can be used when green, as they are now, or when they turn red. I've yet to harvest one to give it a try. (Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy. No kidding, I'm really afraid of them. I mean I'm supposed to wear protective goggles and gloves when I prepare them??)
I have serious doubt that these jack o' lantern pumpkins will make it this year. This is our largest one, about the size of a soccer ball. (Oh well, there's always orange spray paint.)
Unless we have an early killing frost, I think my Red Kuri squash will mature. This one shown here grows visibly bigger each day. Really.
How many green and yellow beans can two people eat? Like the peppers, my bean plants started so slowly this year, but have ended up giving us a bumper crop. I don't think I've ever had such a good crop of beans.
The green and red cabbage are huge, but a bit beat up by munching insects. They've been hard hit by critter damage this year and I've yet to harvest one to see if they are usable. I really must do that soon.
