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bluesgardenTomorrow we're picking black raspberries in the morning! I'll admit that I'm pretty excited - it's a fun activity for both D and I as well as having a great payoff at the end of a couple of hours. I'm planning on picking twice as many as last year, considering how I ran out of jam early and didn't freeze any whole. I'd also like to make a few jars of pie filling and see how that turns out.
Cherries are also on over at the orchard, although I'll probably just run over and do that myself. I still have some jars from last year, so I don't need tons, but I do want some to freeze, both sweet and sour. It's going to make for a crazy week (big yay for that extra fridge right now, believe me) between pitting cherries and making jam, but I'm just glad I'm finally getting to harvest something, even if it's not from my own garden!
(Well, okay, I harvested a good bit of basil for pesto the other day, and I've already eaten some of it - YUM - but there's something magical about picking fruit. I just feel so rich to have access to that kind of bounty.)
Speaking of my own garden, however, a pictorial update!
What I'm considering the main area of the garden this year. The front half of the rows furthest away have the tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, melons, watermelons, onions, and herbs. The other three sections visible are dry beans - Black Turtle, Peregion, and Jacob's Cattle. There's a section of green beans directly behind the nearest row.
The tomatoes are looking very good! This is a lovely Green Zebra. I'm watering them as little as possible this year, in interest of concentrating their flavor rather than growing them large but watery.
This is... a couple of Black Krim tomatoes, I believe, but don't quote me on that. All the plants have good sized fruits but it will be a couple more weeks before they're ripe.
Behind the tomatoes are the peppers, which are very short but chipperly determined. I think they've all put on flowers and some have tiny fruits forming... which will be nearly half the size of their parent plants when they're full grown at this rate.
The herb bed! It's mostly basil and I've already made one batch of pesto. The Lime basil needs to be pulled as I've discovered I'm not a fan, but I'll replace it with the 3 rosemary plants still languishing in the greenhouse. Up front we have thyme, then sage (flanked by a few Rosie basils), then oregano, then the Lime, Cinnamon, Large Leaf Italian, and Genovese basils respectively. I do like the color contrast of the Rosie basil, but the Italian and Genovese varieties are still my favorites to actually use. I may swap out the Cinnamon, which I used sparingly in the pesto but I wouldn't want to use much of, for Holy basil next year. (Tidbit: I just learned recently that Holy basil is otherwise known as Tulsi.)
The onions are coming along nicely! There's also a plot of leeks over next to the green beans, but the onions are what's really taking off. The Red Wethersfield are a bit bigger than the Cortlands, but they're all looking good, so I'm optimistic about having a stash of onions again this winter.
Green Apple cucumbers, which are suddenly growing by leaps and bounds. The thing about starting seeds early rather than direct seeding them into the garden is that sometimes it's not necessary. Two of those 4 spaces above were started inside and 2 were direct seeded 3 weeks later, can you tell which ones? I can't, although I know the pairs were planted diagonal to each other. I'd have to look back at my older pictures to know for sure!
The potato patch, post weeding! That solid row of green to the left is the 'aisle', which D is supposed to weed-eat for me, but the weed-eater is down again. It pretty much looked like that straight across, but I finally went through and cleared it out. It's my stance that the weeds were actually helping shade the soil while we've been having a mini-drought this summer. Really. (We went from 2 of the wettest months on record to the driest month on record. I keep referring to watering the garden as 'redistributing the water table'.)
IT'S A POTATO! There's actually a number of them peeking up out of the soil from where they're forming off the topmost roots of the plants. I went through and covered all the ones I could find with mulch so they don't dry out or turn green from sunlight exposure.
Back towards the middle, in the rear of the garden, we have the pumpkins, which are making a break for the road. Pumpkin vines, if you don't already know, are crazy - I always suspect them of growing whenever my back is turned. Here we have Baby Pam to the front and Fairytale to the back.
Baby Pam is way ahead of Fairytale in the production department - this is one of the older ones. Fairytale just started opening up female flowers in the last couple of days.
Meanwhile, in the greenhouse, we have the second generation of melons. They'll be cutting it close to the first frost, so we'll see how it goes.
Then there are always the 'weeds'. Some, of course, are more interesting than others. :)
Cherries are also on over at the orchard, although I'll probably just run over and do that myself. I still have some jars from last year, so I don't need tons, but I do want some to freeze, both sweet and sour. It's going to make for a crazy week (big yay for that extra fridge right now, believe me) between pitting cherries and making jam, but I'm just glad I'm finally getting to harvest something, even if it's not from my own garden!
(Well, okay, I harvested a good bit of basil for pesto the other day, and I've already eaten some of it - YUM - but there's something magical about picking fruit. I just feel so rich to have access to that kind of bounty.)
Speaking of my own garden, however, a pictorial update!
What I'm considering the main area of the garden this year. The front half of the rows furthest away have the tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, melons, watermelons, onions, and herbs. The other three sections visible are dry beans - Black Turtle, Peregion, and Jacob's Cattle. There's a section of green beans directly behind the nearest row.
The tomatoes are looking very good! This is a lovely Green Zebra. I'm watering them as little as possible this year, in interest of concentrating their flavor rather than growing them large but watery.
This is... a couple of Black Krim tomatoes, I believe, but don't quote me on that. All the plants have good sized fruits but it will be a couple more weeks before they're ripe.
Behind the tomatoes are the peppers, which are very short but chipperly determined. I think they've all put on flowers and some have tiny fruits forming... which will be nearly half the size of their parent plants when they're full grown at this rate.
The herb bed! It's mostly basil and I've already made one batch of pesto. The Lime basil needs to be pulled as I've discovered I'm not a fan, but I'll replace it with the 3 rosemary plants still languishing in the greenhouse. Up front we have thyme, then sage (flanked by a few Rosie basils), then oregano, then the Lime, Cinnamon, Large Leaf Italian, and Genovese basils respectively. I do like the color contrast of the Rosie basil, but the Italian and Genovese varieties are still my favorites to actually use. I may swap out the Cinnamon, which I used sparingly in the pesto but I wouldn't want to use much of, for Holy basil next year. (Tidbit: I just learned recently that Holy basil is otherwise known as Tulsi.)
The onions are coming along nicely! There's also a plot of leeks over next to the green beans, but the onions are what's really taking off. The Red Wethersfield are a bit bigger than the Cortlands, but they're all looking good, so I'm optimistic about having a stash of onions again this winter.
Green Apple cucumbers, which are suddenly growing by leaps and bounds. The thing about starting seeds early rather than direct seeding them into the garden is that sometimes it's not necessary. Two of those 4 spaces above were started inside and 2 were direct seeded 3 weeks later, can you tell which ones? I can't, although I know the pairs were planted diagonal to each other. I'd have to look back at my older pictures to know for sure!
The potato patch, post weeding! That solid row of green to the left is the 'aisle', which D is supposed to weed-eat for me, but the weed-eater is down again. It pretty much looked like that straight across, but I finally went through and cleared it out. It's my stance that the weeds were actually helping shade the soil while we've been having a mini-drought this summer. Really. (We went from 2 of the wettest months on record to the driest month on record. I keep referring to watering the garden as 'redistributing the water table'.)
IT'S A POTATO! There's actually a number of them peeking up out of the soil from where they're forming off the topmost roots of the plants. I went through and covered all the ones I could find with mulch so they don't dry out or turn green from sunlight exposure.
Back towards the middle, in the rear of the garden, we have the pumpkins, which are making a break for the road. Pumpkin vines, if you don't already know, are crazy - I always suspect them of growing whenever my back is turned. Here we have Baby Pam to the front and Fairytale to the back.
Baby Pam is way ahead of Fairytale in the production department - this is one of the older ones. Fairytale just started opening up female flowers in the last couple of days.
Meanwhile, in the greenhouse, we have the second generation of melons. They'll be cutting it close to the first frost, so we'll see how it goes.
Then there are always the 'weeds'. Some, of course, are more interesting than others. :)
