Monday August 4

All in all, it was a very productive week from the vegetable beds.  The pace looks to be well ahead of last year.   This was a diverse harvest.  Of course there was a lot of summer squash.  Did I say that squash production was slowing down?  The lone plant (Cocozelle) was just taking a breather.  I've cut off excess leaves, but the squash, they just keep on coming in.  What I like about this variety, in addition to it's good flavor (for a summer squash) is it stays tender even when it gets large, as when I miss a day.  No pics of squash, there's really no point. 

The peppers have been slow to mature this year with the mild summer temperatures.  Last week I picked enough Jalapenos and Serranos to make a batch of salsa, using the Pompeii sauce tomatoes.  I hot canned 4 pints and set another pint in the refrigerator.  This time it was judged sufficiently hot - the Serranos bump up the heat a notch or two.

A few days later I found a tomato hornworm on the Serrano plant.  It seems like these caterpillars spring into life fully formed, and there they are as big as your finger busily defoliating the pepper plant.  I picked that one, tossed it into the pond, then two days later found ANOTHER one on the same plant.  It too went into the pond.  At this point the Serrano plant is more than half defoliated.  Looks like I'll have to buy some hot peppers.

The first eggplant was harvested.

More tomatoes, for the next batch of salsa:

More beans.  The long beans are Fortex. Provider beans are in the lower left and Roma II beans upper left.  I mentioned in an earlier post that the Provider beans, a bush bean, are from plants that had already had a flush of production then stopped, which is usually when I pull them up.  They are producing another flush of beans, which is a real bonus.

The Ruby Ring onions had been sun-drying for about two weeks and looked ready to store.  The tops were cut off and here they are before they were put in mesh bags.  The harvest totalled just over 19 pounds, a bit less than last year but considering that only half as much area was planted in  these onions I'm pleased with the results.  Combined with the four rows of Red Tropea onions the onion harvest is over 24 pounds.

This year I planted them a bit closer together.  Although there are no really large onions they are more consistent in size this year, what I think of as a medium sized onion.  Of all the onions I found only two with any defects at all.  They are all hard as rocks and should keep very well.

The total for the week is just over 40 pounds. 

To see what other people are growing head on over to http://daphnesdandelions.blogspot.com/