Back the the homestead

Out of town for a few days, a kind neighbor watered the garden for us. We came back to:

• 8 oz pattypan squash
• 7 oz eggplant
• 21 oz zucchini
• 1 oz jalapeno
• 3 oz corn - this was way early for the corn, but the Mrs. wanted to see if we could save one before the squirrels ate it.
• 4 lb 12 oz cucumber (time to pickle some)
• 2 lb 1 oz tomatoes
• 3 oz green beans

So about 9 and a half pounds of produce. Not bad, but I feel like we should be getting more.

The best haul was 26 ripe Sun Gold off a potted plant on the front deck - maybe about a three gallon pot. The nicest looking pick was a 13 oz pickling cuke that was enormous for the type, but looked beautiful.

Northern Pickling Cucumber

EDIT - The corn was not ready. Also, made 7 quarts of dill pickles, yum.

Big tomatoes

Big tomatoes coming in! Picked a little early. Kelloggs Breakfast and Brandywine.

Kelloggs Breakfast tomato and Brandywine

[Editor's Note - The Brandywine was delicious as expected. The Kellogg's was tasty, but not as flavorful as the Brandywine. But extremely meaty, might be good for sauce.]

I need to water more

We're going to be going away for a few days and I've been a little worried about my plants and how well they'll do in the scorching heat without watering (90 - 100 degrees some days). A few of the peppers in pots out front have been wilting in the heat pretty badly, though I'd water them and they'd come back. So I figured there's no way the wilty ones will survive in their pots, and I decided to plant them in an open spot in the garden.

Normally I water them a little bit every day. I don't want to underwater, but I'm maybe a little too afraid of overwatering. So I give them each a little water. I think I'm underwatering by a long shot. Today the heat wave broke and we got a torrential rain storm. I figured the plants were all soaked and happy. So I went to transplant one of the wilty peppers and this is what I saw.

Jalapeno that's not watered enough

That was a wake up call. I'm just not watering enough. I hit each wilty plant with a nice deep watering, until water flowed out the bottom of the pot. I'm thinking they won't be wilty tomorrow. Guess we'll see.

Transplanted about 10 basil seedlings out into the garden. Also 3 pepper plants. We'll see if they perk up.

Black Cherry

First taste of the Black Cherry tomatoes. Pretty good, the Mrs. liked them. I picked them a little green, the danged squirrels have me paranoid. Picked a bunch yesterday, then more today, we're getting a steady stream of Golden Suns.

Fistful of tomatoes

Black Cherry

The leek transplants are starting to stand upright. And we've got a ping pong ball sized bell pepper.

Some of the Tomatoes Coming In

The first Gold Nugget tomatoes ripened. They were good, but not as good as Sun Gold. The same bright orange color. Perhaps a bit larger.

Gold Nugget

Also had the first Cherokee Purple today. Well, squirrels had the first, we had the second. And even that had a nibble out of it. But it was delicious. Here are some up and coming Cherokee Purples, still a bit rare...

Cherokee Purple

They're ugly, but tasty. So far this year we've had maybe 40-60 Sun Gold and maybe 6-8 Tigerella. More Sun Gold coming every day.

Sun Gold

We tried a pattypan style Bennings Green Tint summer squash. It was not as good as regular zucchini. But decent, and interesting shape / color.

Bennings Green Tint Squash

Will wrap up this post with green beans, basil, and a baby jalapeno.

Green Beans

Sweet Basil

Jalapeno

Squirrels At It Again

So I had a whole long winter to plan for squirrel attacks. So what did I do? Nothing. I guess it was partly wishful thinking, maybe they only went after the tomatoes last year because of the heat/rain/who knows what. Well, they've started sampling again. Took a few bites out of some nice ripe Tigerellas, but the straw that broke the camel's back was when they took a big chuck out of an almost ripe Cherokee Purple. Like a big one. And the first one, I might add. So I pondered what to do for a bit. My last year's plan was to build a moveable, modular super cage out of pvc pipe and chicken wire. That would have been pretty cool. But alas, I didn't do it. So I slapped up a crude, crude, very crude fence around them again using leftovers from last years tomato fence. But instead of making it big, solid and ugly, I made it flimsy and ugly. I half suspect it will collapse on the tomatoes before the season is over. And I don't have a good way of accessing the tomatoes. That's gonna be an annoying problem.

SO. Here's my to do list for next year.

• Build an awesome chicken wire tomato cage with a door over two of the long raised beds.
• Cover the beds with a load of composted cow manure early in the spring before planting.
• Bone meal, fertilizer, and egg shells in the tomato holes to combat blossom end rot.
• Plant seedlings early in the basement so the plants are ready to go once we're past the last frost date.
• Get pepper seeds from a catalog, not a pepper - we had really poor germination with peppers.
• Floating row covers for zucchini. Or something. Use the new zucchini rampicante, hopefully that will survive the borers.
• Build a solid trellis for the peas. They died not long after falling over this year.

Garlic Bonanza

Hauled in the garlic harvest. The bulbs are smaller than I recall, but this should last us through until next year if it keeps well.

Garlic harvest

Got some baby leeks from a neighbor. Planted them out, we'll see how they do.