Well, it's now into September and the gardens are showing signs of the cooler nights (down to upper 50s a couple of days recently) and the lower sun angles. So it's time to give you a report on the summer gardens. Mostly great news!
The asparagus produced nicely after two years of waiting, the corn was great (though organic corn will have some worm issues which we cut around OK), the tomatoes are prolific (still), the butterbeans were a bust (probably due to bad seeds), the swiss chard has continued to produce all summer, the okra is prolific and requires cutting most days even though we only have 4 plants, the squash is still coming on and Susan squashes the squash beetles every day (get that?), the peppers are still going (both the hot ones for Jody and the sweet ones for us), the eggplant is steady (thanks to Hope Hodgkins providing us some of her plants plus the ones we bought from Shoe at the Hillsborough farmers market, and I could goon. as you can see, it has been and still is a great garden season.
The cucumbers were amazing - Susan did not plant any but three volunteered from last year and they were prolific! Susan has put up 14 quarts of sweet pickles and this without planting anything! God is enjoying the garden as much as we do I think.
Then the tomatoes - we started with about 10 plants of different varieties, including heirlooms, sun golds, granddaddy, and cherokees. Then Susan amazingly broke the suckers off these plants after they were up a few feet and stuck the suckers into a raised bed with a little organic fertilizer mixture and lots of watering and guess what - we hads 22 more plants survive which were then transplanted to the lower garden and are vigorously producing. I picked over 50 tomatoes in one day last week (not sun golds either). Susan has developed quite a green thumb as you can tell. Our largest tomatoes weighed in at 1.5 pounds earlier in the summer. The plants are about 6-7 feet tall and would likely be taller except our cages are only 4 feet.
Now the lettuce - i had challenged Susan to get lettuce to grow long enough into the summer to have fresh lettuce with tomato sandwiches and shge did and we have actually had a small amount of lerttuce all summer - now the fall lettuce is growing nicely in three beds so it looks like fresh BLT sandwiches on into October at least. By the way, our fresh BLTs have Susan's homemade soft bread plus bacon from our local co-op Weaver Street Market with Organic Canola Mayo. Nothing tastes any better than this!
The first fall plantings are done - lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, collards, sweet potatoes, cauli flower and brussel sprouts. All look good so far.
Later we will try white potatoes (if we can find seed potatoes) and for sure lots of garlic.
Oh, Susan has put up a lot of pasta sauce and more to come in the coming days.
The goats continue to contribute nice mulch for composting and the chickens are doing their job too. They all work around here and the end result is great tasting food that we do not have to worry about what has been done to it. (A lady at the farmers market said if the corn was pretty (perfect rows) then it muct be treated with pesticides - she only buys buggy/wormy corn for this reason.)
We have also befriended a great local organic farmer who is known as "Shoe" since he does not wear shoes at all, even in the winter. His real name is Rex. He knows an amazing amount about organic farming, works with heritage seeds, and sells wonderful plants from his seeds. We visited his farm two weeks ago and we could have stayed for days listening to him. He taught Susan how to save tomato seeds and gave her some rare tomatoes that he is working with to try to save for next year. We'll keep you posted on this project.
I'm sure there's more but I'll stop for now. Hope you enjoyed reading about Our Life Now.
