9.01.2009

Late August Gardens

It's time for some long overdue garden pictures! It was an incredibly busy August, and I lost track of my gardens for a while. Luckily, most things were established enough to survive without too much care.

There's not a whole lot to report from our Quann garden plot. All of the potatoes are dug (here's the final haul of fingerlings). The Canario beans are going strong. We moved across town from that garden, so we don't get over there much. Basically we're just waiting for the beans to ripen and dry, then we'll go back and harvest. The potatoes did really well there - we yielded more than 30 pounds, which I consider pretty good for such a small plot. We won't have to buy them for a while, that's for sure!

Oh, the sweet corn.....what an adventure that has been! It's all harvested now. I've got a post coming up all about corn, so I won't go into much detail now. We got quite a bit, especially considering that it all blew down in July and everyone told me that the raccoons would eat it and it wouldn't pollinate. In the end I think we picked 6 or 7 dozen ears. This picture is taken from my height (5'7") looking up. It's huge - some stalks are 8 and even 9 feet tall.

I've got Marina di Chioggias! There were three....

but one of them started to rot. The other two look good. They're such big squash, I'll be happy if I even get one that makes it to maturity!

There's 3 or 4 Winter Luxury Pumpkins that look just about ripe already. None of the winter squash yielded exceptionally well - it got too shaded by the corn. All the squash that are developing are doing it on branches that grew outside the bounds of the garden plot..... 9 foot corn is not always a good thing.....

There are a total of three little black futsus that are getting close to full size....

An oh, the beans! They are growing up the corn stalks just as they're supposed to, and there's a ton of them! These are dry beans, so like the Canario beans at Quann, we just have to wait for them to ripen and dry. Aren't they gorgeous?

Speaking of gorgeous, check out these peaches! I've heard from other people that this is an especially good peach year in Wisconsin. They're really close to ripe..... I can't wait to fill my freezer! I was thinking of trying my hand at canning some too.... opening a jar of homegrown summer peaches in January sounds too good to pass up!

On to the house garden. It's not quite as picture perfect, but we're still getting a lot of food out of it.

One thing's for sure, we're not lacking in basil. The ability to grow basil was one of my reasons for moving away from foggy coastal Northern California, and even a cooler than normal Wisconsin summer hasn't disappointed me! There's just something so wonderful about having as much basil on hand as you could possibly want.....

The poor poor tomatoes. The black walnut tree in the neighbor's backyard has just about done them in. Magically, the four cherry tomato plants have managed to ripen enough fruit to ensure a steady supply. Next year our tomatoes will be in pots.

The few carrots that did germinate seem to be doing well. I'll go through and pull them all soon to make way for a fall planting of greens or garlic.

Both the turnips and the beets are doing really well. Some have reached a good size, but most are still on the small side. I'll probably wait a while to pull them, and hopefully we'll have enough to last through the early winter.

The eggplants (in the top of this picture) have also been affected by the black walnut. The plants just up and died one day - probably when their roots got big enough to come into contact with the walnut.

They still have eggplants on them though- nice ones. I pulled all but one of the plants last weekend and made a delicious eggplant dish (post coming soon). They were small, but at least we got some! Next year these will be in pots too. I'm going to have to invest in some big pots before next spring....
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1 comment:

  1. I'm (as I write this) canning peaches! I found the recipe in the NY Times Magazine. Here's the link http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/magazine/16food-t-001.html?ref=magazine its particularly for brandied peaches but you can use any liquor in the same vein, we're making ours with rum cause my husband doesn't like whiskey or brandy, oh well, they should be just as delicious! Good luck!

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