Good Night Irene

  Irene wasn't a hurricane by the time she hit Massachusetts, but she sure left a mess of fallen trees and power outages.  We were lucky at our home and never lost power, but the next street over had trees on the power line and no electricity for five days.  Many in  more rural towns  in nearby Rhode Island are still without power as I write.
 My friend Margie has no cell phone, and lives alone.  I was so worried  about her after two days that I drove the detour-filled ten miles to her house, to find her just finishing a letter to me!  I delivered a fresh tomato and took the circuitous route home with a lightened heart.
 Two trees fell in our yard, both without causing any significant damage.  One just missed the fence, the other just missed the power lines. Here's a picture of the Black Walnut resting on the back fence:

Next door a much bigger tree came up by the roots and fell across the driveway.  Their car was parked about four feet from where it fell.

The lima bean trellis tilted, but didn't fall, and the rebar trellis was solid as a rock.

I've been busy harvesting late crops. Here's a trug full of good stuff:

I'm really happy with the delicata squash (that's the striped things, in case you didn't know) I got ten squash from three plants that were  in less than ideal soil-- next year I'll give them more love and see what I get.

I've brought all the ripening tomatoes (mostly 'Mortgage Lifter' ) inside the house because mice were nibbling them in the garage, where I had laid them out on newspaper.   Although the days are still warm, the nights are now much cooler, and the tomatoes ripen faster indoors where it is warmer at night,  so I pick them as soon as they show any color.   

I went out Tuesday morning and found a big section of the most perfectly ripe tomato gone, and mouse droppings all around the others. At least they were discerning, and did not just ruin them all.

Now the tomatoes are on the sideboard above Sol's bed. He doesn't seem to mind. That ought to keep the mice away.

Late Summer Crops

The late summer crops are peaking, including raspberries and pole beans.  My rebar tower is a battlefield between morning glories and beans, with the flowers dominant for now.
I know I should cut them back to increase bean production, but there are so many buds, and I love the flowers almost as much as beans.

 I also picked my first harvest of pole Limas.  Will these crops survive a hurricane? Tune in next week to find out.

Waiting For Irene

  Right now everyone on the East Coast is waiting to see if we'll be hit by Hurricane Irene.  I did some precautionary harvesting, bringing every tomato with even a touch of pink into the safety of the garage.  I also dug my last patch of Kennebec potatoes. I got about five pounds, and only broke the skin of five,  which I will cook and make into mashed potatoes for dinner.  Here is a picture of them both, with the damaged potatoes to the left. I also have ten big tomatoes that are ripening on the kitchen counter, and about a hundred green tomatoes on the vine that I hope will survive.

I also made refrigerator pickles out of  my own garlic and Hungarian wax and Jalapeno peppers. I made these last fall and they were great, and lasted fine through winter. I used a recipe I found on line from Michael Symon.  

I can't come in empty-handed...

I took a quick tour of the garden before sunset, and even though I harvested a lot this morning, there were  a few things I had to pick. I pick the ripest raspberries every night, and  I took the peppers and tomato because the plants were so loaded with fruit I was worried they'd split.  There were more beans, but Sol and I ate them.

Lunch from the garden

Everything in my lunch today came from the garden- Gold Nugget and Mortgage Lifter tomatoes, Yukon Gold Potatoes, yellow onions, basil, and a few yellow beans. But I bought the cottage cheese.

August Triage

The older I get the more I appreciate the concept of triage. Not in the original sense of evaluating patients in an emergency to decide who needs to be treated first, but as a metaphor for how to live. It applies to many aspects of my life, including work, relationships with other people, home maintenance, even deciding what to make for dinner.  And August is all about triage in my garden.
What to do first? Should I cut the grass, water, fertilize, plant, trim shrubs, weed, mulch,  harvest, save seed, or turn over my flowering cover crop?  There are so many things that need doing, especially if I want to maximize my vegetable production during this peak month.
Watering was the priority until last Sunday, when we got two days of soaking showers that revitalized the garden.  Weeding and mulching were also top priorities during the dry spell, since weeds and exposed soil took water away from the crops.
This week I'm focused on harvesting. I'm picking the cherry tomatoes, beans, squash and raspberries everyday in order to harvest these crops at the peak of flavor, and to keep the plants fruiting ( beans in particular stop blooming when mature pods on the plant tell them they have succeeded in reproducing).
I'm blanching and freezing what we can't eat now.  I also planted lettuce and spinach for fall crops, and scattered cover crop soybeans over the  now empty Yukon Gold potato bed.
What am I letting go?  Some weeds are getting ignored, especially those in now fallow beds.  The grass is long, since it has been hard to keep up with between the rain showers. I do keep the front lawn cut, because I like the yard to look neat from the street.
And I'm making time to eat with and appreciate the garden's output.  Purple pole beans crisp off the vine shared with Sol,  'Gold Nugget' tomatoes in a salad with cubed mozzarella and fresh basil, and mashed potatoes made with my own garlic and potatoes.  I don't just grow my own food to save money or avoid pesticides in my diet-- I do it because food fresh from the garden is delicious.

Now I'm waiting for the 'Mortgage Lifter' tomatoes to ripen. I have three lined up on the kitchen  counter.  According to the catalog descriptions, they will be ripe when fully pink.  Every day I pick them up, sniff them and caress them, trying to sense ripeness. I think I'll cut into the big one-- three quarters of a kilogram on my scale (1.6 lbs. )  tomorrow, and share it with my husband.  He'll eat it sprinkled with salt, and I'll add a drizzle of olive oil and sherry vinegar to mine.  Ok, I love beans, but a big ripe tomato is the taste of August.

Tied up and twisted

My Mortgage Lifter tomatoes are so enormous they keep tearing  the plant apart, so I keep tying more stakes to them in hopes of preventing a disaster. Finally they are beginning to ripen!