Radishes and Carrots and Lettuce, Oh My!

I am pleased to report that I harvested our 1st Eureka cuke today! It looks ready to me, it's about 2.5" across and about 6" long, pretty light green stripes on a dark green background -- I took a picture, I'll put it up on my Webshots photos soon -- and it just seemed ready to pick.

It doesn't look like the huge long cucumbers you see in the store, but I think that's because it's a different variety? It's not a heirloom, though. I chose Eureka because the 'word on the street' was that it was a good dual purpose cuke, which is what I wanted. It definitely looks like those fat pickles you see in a barrel at the state fair or renaissance festival or wherever! LOL!

Hubby gets home from work in about 2 hours so I'll wait to cut it open and eat it until he's here to share it

In other news the first Cherokee Purple tomato developed a blush and it's now sitting on my windowsill. The first (huge) Early Girl tomato also had a blush today as well as another Black Krim and another San Marzano, so I brought them all in. Almost all of my BK's have holes in the bottoms from that stupid spider . . . oh well.

No Mortgage Lifters, or Mr Stripey yet.

Peppers are still going strong, green bells have slowed up their growth but they're almost ready, another few days (and another good thunderstorm!) and they'll be ready to go.

We're going to have a bunch of peppers all ready at the same time!

Cukes are showing up slowly but surely, now there's another couple babies on the vines and lots of flowers.

And as for my beans . . . the vines continue to grow half a foot over night, and are developing (like everything else) slowly but surely. One of the vines has what I *think* are flower blossoms, but STILL no flowers! Anxiously waiting for those to develop, here's hoping they *are* flowers and will become beans . . . and that the other 4 vines take their cue from this one!

We have enough tomatoes ripening on the windowsill to make salsa, finally, but I think I'm going to at least *taste* the heirlooms first before I pitch them onto the broiler to roast them. Maybe there will be one that I like enough to eat raw, who knows?

The rosemary in my garden is NOT having a good year (too warm and too wet, I think) and has only grown a few inches since May. We'll see what happens now that August is almost upon us and the temps, in about a week, will start to go down just a bit.

I really love fresh rosemary (and so does Hubby) but I think it might not be the best thing to try to grow up here. Oh well. In theory I'll be able to pot it up this fall and bring it inside under my grow light . . .we'll see!

Oh! Almost forgot about the squash! I've got 3 yellow crooknecks growing on one plant, I picked 2 green zukes today, and the patty pan plant is growing steadily and should start showing flowers soon.

I predict that in a couple weeks, we'll be eating a steady supply of squash



Whitewater

Whitewater, I had my first cucumber in the garden today. DW found it for me.

I think she felt sorry for me that I only came up with a shirt pocket full of Sungold and SunSugar tomatoes and one almost-ripe Tigerella (aka Mr. Stripey in the British Empire).

The cucumber was only about 4" long. She claimed that it was a Ninja cucumber. I think she was having a slight hallucination from being out in the 93 afternoon sun .

Steve

I dunno about that . . . I've got a Ninja too, just found it today, it's already 4" long or more! I can't quite understand how I missed it, but I did!

And heck, after missing not one, not two, but THREE baseball sized zucchini last year, I'm willing to believe that ANY vegetable can be a ninja veggie!


Whitewater

Wow, ok, all my windowsills in my kitchen are full of tomatoes in various states of ripeness. When they all turn red, we'll have enough for approximately 48 oz of salsa, I hope! And since there are still a freaking ton of San Marzanos on the vine, we'll have enough to can some sauce for this winter too, yay.

San M's are definitely going on my tomato list for next year!

I updated my Webshots page (found in my sig.) with a picture of the inside of the first ripe Black Krim. Now THAT is a tomato with flavor! BK's are also going on the list for next year though to get the quantity I want, I think I'll have to have 4 plants instead of two. BK's might just get me to enjoy a raw tomato again.

This week I picked 3 cukes, 4 zukes, a bunch of peppers and a ton of tomatoes. I have many blossoms on my bean vines but a lot of them have turned tan, since this is my first time with beans I don't know if this is good or bad, so I'm leaving them until it's definite one way or another. Here's hoping we see beans soon!

The yellow crookneck squash is producing so many baby yellow squash that I'm starting to worry that I have some sort of determinate variety that produces all in one fell swoop! I have easily 6-8 squash growing on that plant right now. If they all mature at once, it will be zucchini bread time!

Peppers are proceeding apace and I harvested the first green bell a couple days ago. It's about half the size of what you'd get in the store, but as I am sure the store ones are frankenseeds that are fertilized and chemicaled within an inch of their lives, I am pleased with the size of my green bell pepper, grown with nothing but water, sun, soil, and a bit of compost. It's a decent handful.

And we got our first egg today! yay! There are pictures over on BYC (and also on Webshots).

There will be more cukes in a few days. The vines seem to be slowly but steadily ramping up their production. We ate the first one, then pickled the next two -- each cuke made 8oz of kosher dill slices, which we canned and then put in the fridge.

I also canned/pickled some of the peppers that couldn't wait for the tomatoes (I was going to use them for salsa, but alas, tomatoes ripen much more slowly . . .) along with some of the carrots from our garden that were ready to come out of the ground, and some store-bought onion and garlic. We'll see what happens with those in a couple weeks. Got 3 8oz jars from what I had on hand, so not too shabby considering we didn't have *anything* to preserve last year!

The chives are recovering from almost being choked out by the buckthorn. ( I didn't think anything could kill chives, but I was wrong, invading buckthorn can and will!) and I think we may get a good second crop to harvest and freeze or dry for later. The chickens don't seem interested in the chives, so yay, more for the humans around here!

I think that's all the news that's fit to print, at least, when it comes to gardening


Whitewater

There hasn't been much to update recently . . .

Still no beans. Lots of squash, and tomatoes (LOTS of tomatoes . . . ), not as many cukes as I'd like. Some, but not as many as I thought there would be.

3 eggs in 4 days from 1 pullet. Eggs are tiny but getting bigger, slowly. Other 2 birds aren't laying at all.

Still no beans. Just blossoms. And a ton of vines!

Peppers are doing nicely, they alone seem to be enjoying the heat.

Pulled up a carrot yesterday that was a full 8" long and 2" across at the top, one of the Purple Dragons. In the next couple of weeks, we'll probably have most of the carrots ready to harvest.

Ate my first Mortgage Lifter tomato yesterday as part of a home-made deli sandwich and boy, was that good! I was really surprised --and I do NOT like raw tomatoes, but I'd heard so much good stuff about the ML's, I figured I'd take a chance. Wow. ML's are definitely on the list for next year, if I can find them as young plants.

We're going to start making salsa/picante sauce probably in the next 48 hours, now that we have enough 'maters for 3, maybe 4 batches, which as I said earlier will probably wind up being somewhere between 48 and 60 oz of salsa. We're going to try to make both mild and hot flavors.

Yesterday's harvest was 2 crookneck squash, 1 green bell pepper, 1 banana pepper, 2 Anaheim chilis and 6 tomatoes of various sorts.

Today we got an egg from the pullets, but I haven't been out there yet in the garden to see what's ready. I'm hoping the cuke that I've been waiting on will be, and there will probably be another yellow squash, and probably some tomatoes. There would also be carrots for sure, but it's just too blasted hot to go digging about in the ground to get them. (92'F with 50% humidity . . . )

The leaves of the bean vines are looking pretty wilty, so in a couple hours, once the sun starts going down, I'm going to go out there with the hose and water.

eta: today's harvest: 1 crookneck, 6 'maters, and the cuke, pretty much just as I figured Still too hot to go get carrots!


Whitewater