Checking in.....

The eggplants are getting big - I swear once these things get going they seem to grow 1/2 inch or more a day. You can almost see them growing!

I made and processed 5 pints of salsa last night with tomatoes and peppers from the garden. This weekend I hope to try a recipe for green tomato pepper relish that I've been hanging onto. All my peppers will be ripe red and perfect at the same time - at least a dozen, maybe more, so I'm going to have to do something with them quick as I doubt we can eat them fast enough.

I planted some seed this week - red and gold beets, daikon, turnips, rutabaga, kohlrabi, carrots, spinach, kale, chard, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. I suspect I'm getting a late start. It's also been topping at about 101 degrees in the afternoons here lately, probably not ideal germination temperature for most of these things. I have been trying to keep the soil a little moist so they don't all fry out there. I'll see what's up a week or so from now and try again if I have to. I am also going to look into some transplants. I would like to find some at local small garden stores if possible, if not I'll order some. Particularly broccoli, brussels sprouts and cauliflower. I'm pretty sure that I can get everything else to come up from seed, as I have done almost all of this stuff from seed before. Last fall the chard came up from seed just fine. I want to concentrate mostly on compost and straw, in hopes that my fall garden won't turn into the jungle that my spring/summer garden is now. It ain't pretty, but what the heck. It feeds me.

To the left here is a shot of today's garden beauty!

Did I say my cucumbers were dead?

Silly me. Obviously I was mistaken. I should have taken a picture of the part of this plant that isn't climbing up the fence and you'd know what I mean. That thing looks DEAD.


This is what I mean about things seeming really weird right now. Everything looks like it's dying, but it's all still pumping out a crop. (Please ignore the overgrown jungle of weeds that this thing has become.....)

I did get out some to start working those fall beds. I worked the manure compost and peat moss into the one long bed down the left of the plot. That's where I'm going to plant all of my root veggies. The large beds to the right will hold broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, chard, kale, lettuce and spinach. That might alter a little based on availability of transplants....

I pulled up some sweet potatoes this afternoon. Lovely!

And here's a few shots of the beautiful pepper-laden plants with all the peppers turning red!

Last but not least, something pretty I saw in the garden today.

I have EGGPLANT!!!!!

Woohoo! Look at the beautiful little babies!!!!!

Things are kind of a strange combination of slowing down/dying back and big production. It feels like things are slowing down, and yet this week I think I brought in my biggest basket ever, probably because the melons take up so doggone much space. I have manure and hummus compost in my car trunk, and some peat moss. I've been working in the fall garden spot and I really want to get some stuff planted this weekend, mostly the root veggies. I want to mix in a little peat moss where I'm going to put these, especially where I'm going to put the carrots. I'm trying to work up the energy to get out there and do this today. I also have beans and squash I need to blanch and freeze...

I got a new book this week from the Mother Earth News catalog: "The Beginner's Guide to Preserving Food at Home". You're probably thinking that I should have had this book at the beginning of the summer and not at the end, and you would be right! But I'll be able to make more improvements for fall. For one thing, this book talks about root cellaring and I'd really like to be able to do that effectively this winter.

I'm feeling a little weary...

Maybe it's the summer heat. Or maybe it's because all of the garden work from this year is catching up with me. Or maybe it's because the life cycle for a number of my veggies is over. My cucumbers are dead. They really put out a huge amount of fruit for a few months there.

I harvested the last of my banana fingerling potatoes this weekend. They're not really suited for long term storage, so we'll be eating our way through these in the next month or so I would imagine. Next year I'm going to plant these again, and also some suited specifically for storage.


I have been canning tomatoes like a mad-woman. We moved this operation out to the grill on the deck, since running an electric eye full of boiling water on the stove for 85+ minutes just makes the house unbearably hot. I think that the pressure of keeping up with processing all these tomatoes has worn on me a little over the last few weeks. I'm not complaining...just taking a pause.

I've pulled up a few more sweet potatoes here and there, but I don't want to pull up more than we'll eat until I have to. I think I can leave them in the ground for awhile. The bush beans took a hiaitus, and then started producing pretty well again. My yellow wax beans are getting about ready to pick. My carmen and anaheim peppers are finally getting ripe on the plants. Each one has about a dozen beautiful peppers at least. And you're not going to believe this, but I actually got a yellow bell pepper to ripen on the plant! It didn't happen until the other 6 or so on there rotted and dropped off. Sigh.

My tomato plants, while still putting out tomatoes, seem to have slowed a bit too. My orange russian has developed a bit of blossom end rot. This time I treated with bone meal. It seems to be okay today. There's tomatoes on there that aren't affected. The yellow taxi is gasping its last breath. Not sure what happened to it, but it sure put out a HUGE amount of fruit, all within about a month, and then kind of shrunk up and petered out.

I am picking up several canteloupe a day now. I finally had to start pulling them when they were slip ripe (will pop off the vine with a little pressure) rather than just picking them up when they've already fallen off the vine, because they were getting TOO ripe.

And finally, let me introduce you to the new love of my life, my beautiful, big, healthy, multiple-blooming hansel eggplant! It is really thriving in a pot on the deck. About a week or so ago I fed it some tomato tone, and shortly afterwards it began to bloom. I'll do that about once a month I think. It just looks so lovely and healthy, and when it rains its beautiful large leaves cup up to hold the water....I'll have eggplant yet if it's the last thing I do this summer!

The fall garden spot is all tilled up and ready to receive. The next thing I need to do is get the manure compost. Most of what I'm planting will go in as seed. My broccoli, kale and brussel sprouts seedlings all petered out. Just another thing around here that's feeling TIRED. Other than harvesting, I'm kind of just resting up until I get my second wind to do my fall planting this weekend or next, at the latest.

OH MY GOSH....I grew a sweet potato!

So, I was outside, sweating profusely, covering the garden with plastic because it's bug spray day... and I happened to notice that there are furrows developing in one of my sweet potato mounds.




On closer examination I realized that I could see a sweet potato!

There were 2 showing. One of them is below. I don't think that the neck is supposed to curve like that, but heck, I'm guessing a probably have a million sweet potatoes out there...I went back to my garden planning notebook and realized that I planted the slips on 17 April, which means that they have been in the ground about 100 days or so...WOW.

Tomorrow I will have to inspect all my sweet potato mounds and pull out any that are showing above ground. My research indicates that I will then leave them in a basket to dry or "cure" for about 10 days, and I should be able to store them.

And a few recipes...

Cindy asked about recipes for the veggies I showed a few posts back. They're super simple.

Tomato and Cucumber Salad

Chop tomatoes and cucumbers. Mix with one or two cloves of crushed garlic, thinly sliced onions to taste, and freshly chopped basil. Add light dressing of olive oil and vinegar (balsamic or apple cider). Salt. Mix it all together and let rest (in fridge, or out if you're going to eat it in the next hour or so). Sometimes I also thinly slice mini red bells or jalepenos if I have them.

Green Beans and Yellow Squash

I steam the green beans and cut yellow squash until it's al dente. Spread them on a broiler pan (I use the little broiler pan in the toaster oven). Drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt, ground red pepper and shredded parmesian cheese. Bake until the parmesian is just beginning to get golden. Then enjoy!

And finally...FALL

Sorry for all the catch-up posts at one time.

As I've mentioned, I'm thinking about fall. We borrowed a tiller, and this past week my husband set to work tilling us up a new plot for fall, the same size as the one we're currently using for spring. Eventually I want to rotate them, using one for spring, one for fall, and leaving one fallow or planting a cover crop on it. He got the whole thing tilled up, and the grass is actually dying in the heat, which means his tiller did a better job than my months of shovel work. (Go figure). He's going to till all that dead grass under again so he can get deeper. This coming weekend I'll fence it all in and bring home bags of compost manure and then he'll till that in. At that point, I'll be gearing up to plant. Mostly root veggies, as well as chard, spinach, lettuce, broccoli, kale, cauliflower. I want to concentrate on really producing some carrots this time, which I have not gotten to grow successfully yet. I'm still tweaking my garden plan...