Found hiding deep in the leaves on the grape arbor.

A pleasant week in the garden with this odd weather change.  We honestly wore long john’s and a wool caps while working a few of the days.   Its July and this is crazy!  Scott and I have joked for years that we burn wood in the stoves every month of the year except  July-well, we can’t say that anymore.  We started a small fire in the garage wood stove to “take the chill off” one evening.  The cool temperatures makes for easier working conditions but kinda puts the breaks on all the growth of the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.  These plants spent their week just hanging out.

Lots of weeding.  This is the time of year where the grasses and this little succulent guy called portalaca can quickly take over. It gets a bit overwhelming at times but we just plug away.   So LOTS! of heavy weeding all around the garden.  The leeks and I spent many hours together,  I made sure all the new storage carrots had plenty of breathing room, visited the brussels sprouts and cleaned up around the peppers.  I tied up our tomato vines on the trellis.  A fussy time consuming job.  We have a fancy stapler that makes the job much easier.

Tying up the tomato vines.

BLUE! tomatoes on the vine.

The tidy leek patch. 3 different varieties.

Storage carrots!

Scott worked on the greenhouse and we are going to cover it with plastic tomorrow and the job will be done.  He’s putting the green house up over our existing “leafy greens” area that we have been trying not to plant in so he did not have to worry too much where he stepped but as you can see in the photo we have a few crops in the ground that he had to dance around as the poles went up.

Watermelon report!  The vines are taking over the back of the garden and even into the grass.  Scott wanted to flip up the vines and mow and we realized there are bowling ball sized melons growing in the grass.  So, no more mowing back there.  The cantaloupes vines are loaded with blossoms too and tiny little melons developing.  We have 3 varieties in the patch.

Another beauty on the vine!

Our goal in the garden or in the greenhouse is that “something” has to be planted everyday.  “Something” has to go in dirt, either a seed started in the greenhouse or transplants or seeds into the garden.  Forward progress and ensures that we have a constant rotation of crops.  There are many Fall cool loving crops started in the greenhouse now and several are ready to go out and several plants a few weeks out.  We will start our first of 4 rotations of Spinach this week and I will seed in the first bed of Arugula too.

What is in your box

A few wonderful surprises!

Peppers!-Several different varieties. These sure had a slow start this Spring and I was thrilled with the harvest this week… We bagged the hot/medium hot varieties. Jalapeño, Ancho, and yellow hungarian hot wax.  Beautiful Sweet purple bells and a yellow long sweet bulls horn.

Lettuce-A pretty speckled German variety.

Celery-Long tasty stalks.

Cucumbers-Another bag of crunchy snackers and a few long asian varieties.

Zucchini-Assorted collection.

Onions-2 varieties.  These are not dry storage onions.  Keep in the refrigerator.

Honey!!!!!  Our first harvest ever.  Exciting for us and happy to share the harvest with all of you.  Enjoy!  This is raw filtered honey not pasteurized.

Where the bees live at the back of the garden.

Scott and Maeve extruding the honey.

Parsley-A big bunch of large leaf Italian.

Cherry Tomatoes- Just a few-really! a few for everyone.  We wanted to share with all…..  A taste of what is to come.  The tomatoes decided to ripen slowly in the cold this week.

Best Guess for next week…..

potatoes, lettuce, kale, savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, onions.

A wonderful rain yesterday after a long, hot, dry week. It is difficult for us at times to be out in the heat but the plants love the warm days and nights.  Crops are in full swing and amazing to see how the tomato and cucumber vines will grow a foot or more over night.  The watermelon vines are snaking all over the place and once again we thought we allowed TONS! of space for them to spread out and they are slowing sneaking into the sweet potatoes……

The itty bitty watermelon from last week! Now bigger than my head.

The garlic harvest is complete and the huge beauties are drying in the shed aside for a few of the smaller ones we had to include in the boxes this week for a taste.  Scott has pulled the irrigation, tilled and we are set for planting new this week.  We did our last picking of beans from the first planting and it is nice to have a break from the 3 hour every other day duty.  It was a great harvest! Beans will return again in a few weeks from our second planting.

We are pleased that we have not had any issues with blight so far.  Lots of worry but all is well and strong.  Given the long, cool and wet Spring we thought there would be trouble with pests and other moisture issues like molds and fungus.  Happy to report that these issues are low to totally absent this year.  Scott does a daily inspection walk of the entire garden and we use various organic options to keep everything healthy.

Scott and his grand daughter started our carrot harvest this week and had a lot of fun together.  After a quick wash in the wringer washer we bagged them for the boxes.  Delicious.  We were determined to have wonderful carrots this season after last season’s wimpy crop.  We had a terrible time getting seed to germinate in the extreme heat last year.  Here they are!  3 varieties.  Hours of fussy weeding and thinning and hand watering and totally worth it.

Maeve helped clean the onions for the boxes this week and she is proud of her work.  She told us she is the “grand champion onion peeler” and we had trouble getting her to quit and get ready for bed.  We had a glimpse of our future and her help with the boxes.

Anne “the egg lady” is taking preorders for red raspberries next week.  $2 for a  1/2 pint $4 for a pint.  Let me know by Friday if you would like to order. Erdman group members send an e-mail by Friday and we will bring them down with the delivery.  She also brought chickens again this week.  They are in the cooler and $3 a pound.

Pears ripening on the trees!

A note about the boxes….we are short about 40 boxes right now.  Please look at home and bring them back with next weeks delivery/pick up.  Thanks!

Lots of Eggplant in the Extra Box this week…not quite enough for all the boxes so we included it here.  Please take some if you wish.

WHAT IS IN YOUR BOX

What a Smorgasbord this week!!!!

Scott wasn’t sure we would be able to close the boxes this week.

Lettuce-A huge head called Nevada.  A strong lettuce that can withstand the heat.  Scott’s daily watering assured that we would have this jumbo treat this week.  Very tasty.

Beets-A nice sized bundle for everyone.  Remember the greens are edible and delicious.

Beets ready to be bundled….over 550!

Green Beans-1 pound + again!  The last harvest from the first planting.

New bean plants geminating in the old pea area….

Pac Choi-Perfect for the Summer stir fry.

Zucchini-The patty pans are starting to really flower and all the plants are now in full swing.  Again, we harvest daily and pick them small so they are perfectly sized for meals.

Cucumbers-Long slender European varieties and a big bag of crunchers.

Potatoes-3 pounds.  Early Reds this week. Great roasted and makes the best “home fries” ever.  Can be mashed and baked too but this is a bit of a waxer potato.  We have 5 varieties of potatoes in the ground yet so it will be a fun season of trying different varieties.

Scott washing the potatoes in the rain.

Garlic-We sorted the garlic all out for drying and portioned off the smaller bulbs to include in the boxes this week for fresh eating.

Rosemary-Perfect paring with the potatoes.  Dries well too for future use too.

Dill-We wanted to include this when we had a big bounty of cucumbers for refrigerator pickles.

Onion-These are fresh eating onions not storage.

Micro Greens-Little mild sprouted greens to cut and add to salads or a garnish on hot dishes.  Keep on a bright windowsill on a low plate and water as needed.

Best Guess for next week.

Lettuce, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, savoy cabbage and potatoes.

Recipe “issues” again…..I’ll figure it out soon I hope.  Beet brownies are the best!  Do look on the internet for a recipe.

We had a productive week in the garden.  The melon, tomatoes, eggplant, and pepper plants really grew with the warmer temperatures.  Nice for us to see as this was not the type of Spring they enjoy or thrive in.  We seeded in a long loooooooong row of storage carrots for Fall harvest right next to the long looooooong row of summer carrots that look great and we should be harvesting the snappy beauties soon.  More lettuce went in the lettuce beds, 2 long rows of colorful beets were seeded in and whenever we had a spare moment we were weeding fools.  The potato crop looks amazing and we are hopeful it will be our best crop ever.  The garlic is starting to decline and we dug one to take a sneak peak.  A gorgeous big bulb.  We also planted our onions differently this year as we have always had trouble weeding them mid season in the past.  They too are looking great and we should have a bumper crop to share.

Beautiful onions.

We had an uninvited guest in the garden on Wednesday night…..We are guessing a woodchuck. Scott was doing his daily walk through inspection and discovered that the visitor snacked away on EVERY soybean plant in the 200 foot row!  The leaves were completely nibbled off and the stalk remained like a pencil sticking out of the ground.  Disappointing but we replanted within hours of the discovery.  Edamame will just be 3 weeks later this year.

Scott will start putting up the new greenhouse this week and we are excited.  A “season extender”.  Earlier crops in the Spring and we are going to experiment with trying greens all winter long.  Also, we hope to have all our leafy green crops planted in ground in this new house next Summer season.  This will make life much easier without the row cover.

It was an amazing harvest in the garden this week!  The boxes are bountiful and a few of the true tastes of summer have arrived.

First cucumber of the season.

WHAT IS IN YOUR BOX

Cauliflower-over a pound for everyone!  2 varieties, a purple tinged beauty and a fluffy snow white head.  Next week we should see more of the white snowball variety as it is just starting to head up.  Just delicious.  Maeve ate it as her bedtime snack last night.  Lots of cooking options.  Mashed, roasted and makes a great pizza crust.

Cauliflower harvest.

Green Beans- Holy cow!  50 pounds picked off our first picking.  Everyone has a nice big bag for the week.

Cabbage-A favorite we like to grow every year.  A smaller variety that heads up early and is the perfect size for a few meals or a batch of coleslaw.  Flavorful crunchy heads.

Lettuce-Deep green juicy leaves.  Will make a wonderful salad with the cabbage.  These are cute little mini heads that stay small….2+ heads for everyone depending on the head size.

Cucumbers-Just under a pound of assorted snackers.  We are growing 5 different varieties this year and the vines are just starting to produce.  Cucumbers will appear as a staple in many boxes to come this summer.  The vines are loaded with beautiful buttery yellow blooms.

Sugar Snap Peas-This week was the big harvest of the season…we will pull the vines this week.  Amazing harvest and we are so pleased with our “pea season” after last year’s disappointment in the heat. Eat the whole thing-pod and all….Packaged in a plastic bag this week.

Scott picking the sugar snaps high over head!

Shelling pea-Nice plump pods with sweet little peas.  Packaged in a green quart box this week.  Eat peas only after shelling.  Pod is VERY fibrous.  Vines will also be pulled this week.  The end of the peas this year.

Zucchini-6 different varieties are in the garden this year.  There were enough for everyone to get a taste of the first picking of the season.  Another staple in the boxes for the summer.

Kale- A BIG! robust bunch.  Many different varieties in color and texture.

Fennel-2 big bulbs for everyone.  Kale and fennel make a delicious salad.

BEST GUESS FOR NEXT WEEK

Cauliflower, cucumbers, zucchini, parsley, turnips, cabbage, swiss chard