Monday August 19

Another good harvest week.  Well it should be a good week, it's August, and this has been a very good year for growing things.  There's been almost no rain for several weeks, which is typical for August.  About every three days I set up the electric pump near the pond, string out the hoses and give everything a good soaking.  I start out watering the vegetable garden, then water the flower beds and any brown areas in the lawn, then come back to the vegetable beds for a second pass.  It takes about an hour and a half.  I read that pond water is the next best source of water for plants after rain water.

Something is picked nearly every day now.  I've been picking Kentucky Wonder, Provider and Tendergreen snap beans.  Beans have been beautiful this year, not much disease and no sign of the bean beetle.  There's also some San Marzano tomatoes, okra and a Genovese summer squash in this picking. 

A few more Supersonics to eat.  They are a great tasting tomato.  All the Cherokee purple tomatoes that set initially have been lost, but the plant has regained vigor and is producing more blooms.   With some luck it may still produce a few tomatoes.

More beans and okra. I froze some okra, just blanched the whole pod. The large cucumber is a Diva, the smaller one is Picolino.

Sunday the first Roma II beans were ready for picking.  This bean is my favorite bush bean, productive and delicious.  The two big blocky sweet peppers are a Burpee's variety called Cabernet.  The seed packet had about ten seeds in it for $2.49 so it must be a recent development, and it is a real winner.  Burpees describes it as a Lamuyo type pepper.  It looks like a short Marconi, with high shoulders.  Delicious thick-walled pepper, tasty, few seeds, each weighed about 8 ounces.

The pimento type pepper is Lipstick, and the long pepper is a bullhorn pepper.  The large peppers were grilled, skinned and deseeded to go into the next batch of salsa.

For the week:  potatoes 2 lb 1 oz, snap beans 3 lb 5 oz, summer squash 21 oz, okra 16 oz, tomatoes 30 oz, cucumber 23 oz, eggplant 8 oz, and peppers 25 oz.  Total 13.1 lbs, total for the year 137.6 lbs.  To see what other people are growing see http://daphnesdandelions.blogspot.com/