Monday Aug 5

A very productive week.  I've got to decide when to dig out the spuds.  Most of the older vines have the various fungi and blights that older vines get, but there is a healthy growth of new vines too, and that means more potatoes are developing.  I've never seen this happen before but it's probably due to the mild (and pleasant) weather we've had this summer.  The mole has been conspicuous in its absence, something I correlate to the occasional appearances of the large rat snake around the property. I don't think anything is damaging the potatoes right now, so I'll wait a little longer.

There was okra.  There's always okra.  I'm harvesting okra nearly every day. Two more quarts of okra were cold pickled with some jalapenos and serranos thrown in the mix.  I'm convinced that hot canning in a boiling water bath will reduce the okra to a gelatinous mush so I'm going the cold pickle route.  If the okra harvest turns into a deluge I'll start freezing the pods whole, but it seems that the refrigerator pickles should keep a few months in the refrigerator so for now I'll keep on pickling.

A batch of tomatoes ripened all at once.  Supersonics and San Marzano.

The Tendergreen and Kentucky Wonder beans started producing.  The first patch of Provider beans planted in mid-May have gotten a second wind and are producing again. I'm not sure if I like the Tendergreen beans.  They are an excellent bean but the plant is too viney and they tangle up, which makes them a real pain in the arse, and lower back, to pick.

Finally a batch sweet peppers was ready to pick.  The large peppers are Corro di Tosa Rossa (apologies for any misspellings), a bullhorn pepper new for me this year, and the ones that look like pimentos are Lipstick.  I liked Carmens a lot better and will go back to growing them next year.

More beans and jalapenos.  Sweet peppers, hot peppers and tomatoes means salsa.  Sunday I hot canned some salsa for the first time, but that's another post, one where I'll try to talk about canning acid foods from a chemistry perspective. 

The onions were moved into the pole barn a week ago.  It was time to remove the leaves from the onions and get them ready for storage, if I could only decide where.  Anyone know where you can get mesh onion bags?  For a brief while I entertained the notion that I could braid onions and garlic, to the point of downloading a tutorial.  When I read it I found out that the author assumed that the reader actually knows how to braid something.  Off came the tops.  They weighed out to 21.8 pounds, and with the yellow onions picked several weeks ago nearly 24 pounds of onions total.  Now I get to post yet another picture of my onions. 

Can't forget the garlic, nearly a pound on my first attempt.  Not much yield but it is good.

For the week:  okra 1 lb, beans 2 lb 11 oz, tomatoes 6 lb 7 oz, peppers 2 lb 3 oz, eggplant 12 oz, garlic 14 oz, and onions 21 lb 13 oz.  Total for the week 35.3 lb.  With this harvest the yearly total goes past one hundred pounds.  Here's the spreadsheet for the year to date.  Onions have moved into first place in pounds produced, cabbage is hanging on to second place with cucumbers running third, but those rankings will change quickly.   You can click on the pic for a larger version.

 
To see what other people are growing go to http://daphnesdandelions.blogspot.com/  Declare your independence from the industrialized food system - grow your own!