(Oops. The title was supposed to be Mid-August Garden and Food Preservation Report.)
It's definitely harvest time now! I gave up on weeding quite some time ago, and have not been as aggressively battling the ground squirrels, because I need to focus on gathering in the fruits of my labors. Fortunately, the varmints have not been causing as much trouble as before. But they are still around, kicking up mounds of dirt here and there. One of them even had the nerve to tunnel right up into one of my cucumber plants, which did survive with only minor damage.
If you look closely at the above photo, you can see the hole in the middle. I put poison pellets down there, and added a rock on top. That little cucumber actually grew big enough to eat, despite the disruption to the plant.
The green beans produced very well. I could have kept on picking and canning them, but I needed to move on to other crops. I offered the rest to a neighbor, but she hasn't been able to get over here to deal with them. If necessary, I can just pull up the plants and take them to her pigs!
The zucchini and yellow summer squash are producing at a reasonable rate. So far I have been able to keep up with using them, including sharing a few with friends. I ended up with three varieties of the yellow squash: Gold Rush and Gold Finch, both from the Farmers' Market, and also Early Prolific Straightneck Squash that I started from seed. They are all very good.
The tomatoes are beginning to ripen, both the Romas and the Pik-Reds. I inadvertently planted them too close together, so it's an absolute jungle now. I have one Bronze Torch tomato plant, but none of those are ripe yet. Nor are the yellow pear tomatoes. I have been freezing these whole, with the intention of making tomato sauce and salsa sometime in the fall when I have time for such things.
Last week I dug a hill of potatoes to see how they were coming along. This hill looked great! The bag of seed potatoes I bought contained three varieties. This happens to be purple potatoes. They look quite peculiar on one's plate, but taste just fine.
This variety of strawberry is supposedly Everbearing, but I am going to call them August-Bearing, because that's when they decide to turn red. I don't have a large strawberry patch, so they are trickling along 2-4 cups at a time. I wash and freeze the best ones, and pop the rest into my mouth as I go.
Last weekend I spent three days and three nights at my daughter's house babysitting their two children so she and her husband could enjoy a mini-vacation by themselves. It went well, but I came home feeling rather wrung out. And then I found all these cucumbers in the garden the next morning. They went nuts while I was gone! I turned the largest ones into refrigerator pickles and cucumber sour cream salad (a great recipe from my mother-in-law, which I should share some day, but not right now). The smaller ones became 5 quarts of dill pickles, but even some of them were a bit on the large side.
Wednesday I decided it was time to harvest an ear of corn and see if it was ready. This particular ear was perfect! Since then I have picked 5 more ears, two of which were also perfect, and two of which weren't quite as ripe as they could have been. One of those had an odd twin inside the husk:
Yesterday I harvested all the beets, about 12 pounds total. All sizes were represented, so I chose to keep out the biggest ones to just cook and eat. The others I canned. The photo shows the recent dill pickles, the beets, and an amazingly large onion I pulled yesterday as well. It's a Caliber onion.
The winter squash are coming along nicely. In the above photo you can see three Red Kuri squashes on their way to becoming dark orange/red. Those two plants only produced 5 squashes. One of those plants has struggled from the beginning, going wilt-y as soon as the day gets a bit too warm for it. The Sweet Mamas produced a lot more than that; you can see one on the right.
I have found green peppers to be an unreliable crop here, yet it looks as if we will have a few! I picked one already, but it was still a bit bitter.
I'm so glad I scattered marigolds throughout the garden! They add such a cheery splash of color.
I only saved a few of my old gladiola bulbs for this year, intending to buy new ones. I didn't get around to making that purchase, so I only have about a dozen glads. So far, this is the only one to bloom, but I see another spike in the photo.
I am glad I got as much done in the garden yesterday as I did; late yesterday afternoon the smoke from area wildfires poured into our area, and the air quality today is very bad. It's a great day to stay indoors and write a Hive post, take naps, and read a library book. My aged mini-dachshund loves it when I take it easy all day; it's easier for him to keep track of where I am, and that really seems to matter these days.
Everything looks really good! After your earlier disasters, I'd say your garden has recovered beautifully! So jealous of your corn, beans and peppers. My peppers are just starting to flower, and we'll be lucky if the first frost isn't coming up before they ripen. I guess next year I'd better start those seeds a month earlier than I did this year.
I wasn't going to plant peppers, but then I ran across a good deal on small plants so I bought four. I've never tried to start them from seed, but my husband might have done so, years ago.
Peppers are persnickety for sure, but this year looks good for me, as long as the weather stays warm enough for them to ripen. They germinate very slowly, always the last things to come up, just when I start thinking they won't come up at all.
There is a reason why God made us not to be able to have children when we get older but we can enjoy grandkids for a short time.
A garden is the only reason I would ever want to live up north. In the summer here there is not much we can grow, the bugs will eat everything if they do not get them, the sun will. But I can grow a nice garden all winter. I have never seen a corn grow a corn you just never know what you will see, lol. I have seen some very strange-looking tomatoes and carrots.
A three-legged carrot
this tomato grew through the wire
I have seen odd carrots before, but never a tomato squeezing through the wire!
I guess it had the will to survive.
I love your garden! Those vegetables, berries, and flowers are lovely. I don't have a lot of ideas about canning but I've read somewhere that it is a sustainable way to preserve food.
My mother canned many quarts of fruits and vegetables when I was growing up, so it isn't a new idea for me. I know many folks have no experience with canning at all, but for me it has always been part of my life.
Very nice, your preserves look great. I actually never tried preserving food or vegetable. But in the coming months, I think I am going to try it out.
If you get good instructions from a book or pamphlet, and invest in the necessary equipment, it's really not that difficult to do. You might want to start with something really simple, like strawberry freezer jam, if you can get strawberries where you live. If you want to try canning, some fruits are simpler than others to prepare and process. Around here, cherries and apricots are easier than peaches or pears.
I see, thank you for the information, it would be of great help if I try canning.
You can actually see in your garden! Mine's so lush you can't see or get in there. And I planted them 6' apart each way!
And you got corn!
The flowers are lovely!
Loved seeing your August garden.
Thanks for stopping by! I tried hard to space things far enough apart so I could weed and harvest easily. I sort of succeeded, but not completely.
This year I increased row spacing to 2' apart as I am no longer only 18" wide. Sigh... Things that sprawl and tomatoes and peppers get a 4' or 6' square spacing. And still the garden's a jungle...
That made me chuckle! I put all of my rows 3 feet apart this year, but the tomatoes should have been farther apart within the rows. I am not sure how I spaced them, and now I sure can't tell!
Next time, maybe I could suggest trying a small can of catfood instead of poison? It's worked very well here for woodchucks...
Cat food, huh? Does it make them sick? That wasn't a suggestion I found on any of the ground squirrel websites. By the time I resorted to poison, I had run out of other options, none of which were working anyway. And I was desperate to save the rest of the garden.
No, they are vegetarian and the smell (you bury it in the hole) drives them away. Well, that was the idea for woodchucks and it worked every time I tried it.
Bloody varmints! Seems like you got a good cucumber crop regardless.
I have a very simliar basket - well, two of them! And could do with more - I love their bright colours.
Seems like everyone's pickling and preserving right now - makes me sad that winter is coming and the garden journals won't be as many or frequent!
Maybe some folks in warm climates will fill in the gap!
The SE asian crew seem to garden all year round, but there's not many of us here south of the equator - I'll have to hassle the South Africans and the South Americans...
Okay!!