Tuesday September 2

Well I couldn't get online on Monday to publish the weekly harvest totals, but there is not much to talk about anyway.  Production from the garden is in a bit of a lull, thanks or no thanks to a shortage of sunshine the past two weeks.  Most days have been gray and cloudy, and the area has seen plenty of rain for this time of year.  The slowdown is unusual for this time of year, but there is still another month of decent production remaining.

Snap beans gave me nothing.  It's a temporary thing.  The Fortex pole beans have set a lot of new flowers and foliage and should be back up to speed soon.  No squash either.  I pulled out the lone summer squash plant about 10 days ago to give the sweet potatoes more room.  That single plant has been extremely productive this year and to be honest I was getting tired of squash.  A replacement squash plant has been growing quickly and already has set some female flowers, so more squash are coming.

Tomatoes on the other hand are just about done, victims of leaf blight.  I'll get a few more but expect that the plants will come out in a week or so.  Next year I plan to put more space between the cages to allow more air flow.

I did get cucumbers.  The Diva cucumbers just don't stop.  The Silver Queen okra plants have finally sized up enough to make some okra.  And I'm getting a few Tribute strawberries nearly every day, something I didn't expect in their first year.

It hasn't been a good year for eggplant but a few are now maturing.  That's a Round of Hungary pepper.  It was an impulse buy at the farmer's market.  It's a really good pepper, sweet and mild, but needs to be staked.

Also some Honeybear Acorn squash.  These came off the plant that was lost to the borer about a month ago.  I didn't know if the squash had matured enough for the table, but it turns out that they were fine so I weighed them and added them to the tally.  Not as sweet as they could be, they tasted more like a Spaghetti squash, but nothing wrong with them, except the one in the center which went soft and had to be tossed.

A total of just over 5 pounds for the week, the lowest tally since June, and 227 pounds for the year.  I'm still hoping for over 300 pounds for the year, about a pound per square foot.  There will be more squash, beans, carrots, and okra.  The heavy lifting will be done by winter squash, sweet potatoes and parsnip.