Today is a holiday so I can get this post up on time for the harvest round-up at Daphne's Dandelions.This week it has felt like the garden is slowing down because most of the plants look middle-aged, a bit like stressed-out parents with too many children. But bedraggled as the plants might be, their progeny is beautiful and plentiful. The peak harvest time continues.
We are pretty much keeping up day to day with eating lettuce, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, Black Krim tomatoes, an occasional pepper or eggplant. But the heavy producers that need to be processed for the freezer are accumulating. Counter tops are covered with Better Boy tomatoes and there are bulging bags of beans and zucchini in the refrigerator. Not to complain, of course. Abundance is not an obligation but a celebration!
Week of Sunday, August 30 through Sunday, September 6
Sunday, August 30 (This should have been included with last week's portfolio, but I got the days mixed up.)
Above, left to right: one Cochella zucchini; a handful of Kentucky Wonder pole beans; Better Boy tomatoes; lemon cucumbers; volunteer red cherry tomatoes; Blue Lake pole beans.
Tuesday, September 1
Blue Lake pole beans; Better Boy tomatoes; one lemon cucumber; one Black Krim tomato; Green Racer zucchini; Sungold cherry tomatoes.
Thursday, September 3
Red Sails summer lettuce; Better Boy tomatoes
Friday, September 4
Sungold cherry tomatoes; Better Boy tomatoes; Blue Lake pole beans; one Japanese eggplant (first one -- yay!); three Pimientos de Padron; one lemon cucumber; one Black Krim tomato; Green Racer zucchini; volunteer red cherry tomatoes
Saturday, September 5
Better Boy tomatoes; lemon cucumbers; a surprise resurgence of Tavera French haricot beans; lots and lots of Sungold cherry tomatoes; Blue Lake pole beans. Not pictured: another pile of Red Sails summer lettuce, picked before dawn because a certain canine companion just HAD to go out. Prime lettuce picking time.
The Kentucky Wonder beans have pretty much stopped producing -- nothing harvested since August 30. The spider mites got them. But that's a story for another time.
4 comments:
Oh, my beans have been totally infested with spider mites this summer also. I pulled out my spring sown plants ages ago and wasn't able to get replacement plants going because of rats. Oh well, plenty of other veggies to feast upon. It looks like you've got a nice selection of veggies also.
Sonoma is one of my favorite places - I used to hang out in Glen Ellen on a regular basis.
I did a little reading on spider mites and found that they thrive in hot dry weather, which is what we have had this summer and last. Last summer was worse because the fires in Mendocino County made our air smokey for weeks. I tried hosing down the plants now and then but evidently didn't do enough to make a difference. It was still a good crop, tho. Sonoma is a wonderful little town -- Glen Ellen, too -- to the west of where we are in Sonoma County. Rats? Are they tree rats? We've had those.
That is a lot of cherry tomatoes. I'd have trouble keeping up with them. My cherries have stopped themselves way down and now I don't get many at all. I can finally keep up. Tree rats? I didn't know they existed. We do call our squirrels "rats with tails" sometimes when they are being pest like.
When we had a blackberry jungle in the back part of the yard it was home to tree rats. They live on fruit and travel at night along fence tops to get to the fruit trees and vines. Pretty benign, but rats nonetheless. We aren't sorry they don't live here anymore.
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