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!

August 1 tour of the kitchen garden

Sol's garden July 25, 2011

Hot, Hot, Hot

  Once again I cannot complain about the weather, because it is much hotter in most of the rest of the US.  It seems like New England is one of the few places in the country that still has weather that is 'temperate', because we have Canada on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other.
  A few years ago I visited Texas because I thought I might move there.  I stayed in the hill country near Austin, and loved much about the area, but the seven hour hail storm in May was scary, and even scarier was the locals saying that it was no big deal.  
  We've had great growing weather this year.  There have been up to week long stretches without rain, but when it comes there has been a lot, so the rain barrel and aquifer are topped up nicely.  The heat this week has made the midseason crops take off, and I've got lots of beans and squash, with peppers and tomatoes coming along fast.  The first ripe tomato was 'Gold Nugget' on July 15, and I had the first moonflower bloom the same day.  Moonflowers love it hot, and that's the earliest I've ever had a bloom.
  The heat finished off the Favas, but I got 3 good harvests from them. Next year I'll plant them earlier, with the peas in March, instead of May with the green beans.
  I also harvested one patch of 'Yukon Gold' potatoes.  They were in an old bed with soil that was a bit depleted, and I got about twenty pounds from the five I planted.  The fingerlings are more vigorous growers, and in a richer bed, and should give me at least a five to one return when I dig them up later this month.  The garlic is drying in the garage, along with about five pounds of yellow and red onions.
I made a pasta salad with sherry vinaigrette dressing this afternoon, featuring my own  green and yellow beans, red onion, basil and parsley.  I'm ending the day sweaty but happy to be living in the midst of a green and bountiful garden when so much of the country is hot and dry.