Summer Has Arrived!

A windowsill full of yum

Birdhouse Gourds trellising themselves











Black Hungarian Pepper!

Tomatillo

What's wrong with my peppers?? Anyone?

Don't you just love Zinnias?

Dwarf Sunflowers in front of a big one

When the tomatoes start falling off the vine into your hands....you know summer has arrived. Along with some cherry tomatoes, I harvested my first peppers (one bell and one Black Hungarian) this morning and three tomatillos. I also grabbed some carrots and a few beets. The beets are currently boiling and the carrots were just added to some fresh cabbage picked up at the Madiera Farmers' Market. The scarlet skin of the red dragon carrots add something special to my typical coleslaw.

Last night, the power went out, my boots got soaked on the porch, and three and a half inches of rain fell. I wore my galoshes to the plot this morning, scattered blood meal about the tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos, grabbed whatever I saw and got out of there before the next thunderstorm rumbled through.

Too Hot for Broccoli

So, as you have noticed, I've been absent. Chris and I were out of town for marathon wedding attending...Sandusky, St. Louis, then Colorado and back to Cincinnati. So much fun, but we sure did miss a lot on the plot.

We were elated when we arrived there for a few hours of work yesterday; I felt so at home taking care of our veggies. However, not everything in the garden was something to smile about. The radishes had all bolted (went to seed), the peppers are all limp, the eggplant are yellow, only two of the Amish melons germinated, and the broccoli died. It was too hot for most things in the cole family...cabbage, broccoli, radish. They prefer 60 to 70 degrees and it's certainly been hotter than that. The leaf lettuce is done for. The little that I harvested tasted quite bitter but the romaine is still pretty delicious so I'm leaving that in the ground for a bit longer. Along with the lettuce and some basil, I harvested 4 cherry tomatoes and 1 yellow pear tomato, as well as 4 red beets and 3 red dragon carrots; I had a terrifc salad for dinner.

Thankfully, my mother was willing and able to hoe and harvest while we were away. She reported a lot of rain which explains the yellow eggplant and plenty of heat which explains everything else. Also, the aphids which I forgot to mention are gone after spraying the tomatoes with a solution of 5 parts water, 1 part soap, and 1 part olive oil. Things are back on track even if it's too hot for broccoli.

Fruits of Our Labor

LABOR













FRUIT







YUM