Blessed

I am amazed at how well our garden has done this year, despite the few setbacks. The tomatoes have been ripening, and not only are they producing pretty decent amounts of tomatoes, but some are of an astonishing size as well. When I go to pick them, often they practically fall into my hand, and the taste makes me never want to eat a store-bought tomato again. It's like the difference between a meal of bread and water and a six-course feast. The tomatoes in the basket are from the Amish paste plants that I started from seed in my house back in February.



These are my three eggplants, and as you can see, the largest plant has produced an eggplant of enormous size for the heirloom variety called Rosa Bianca. It's bigger than any of the ones I've seen offered for sale at the farmers' market this year!






























The beans are tying for a new batch of flowers, for another producing run before fall frosts hit. The mammoth melting snow peas lasted late into the summer. We're getting cucumbers now--both lemon cukes and the little spacemasters, so I need to do some pickling while they're still in production. The volunteer kale seems to be going nuts as though to make up for what we lost earlier this summer. White carrots are maturing and look good, and I'm able to save seed from the radishes for next year. Just being out there with the plants, looking at all the food they're producing for my family makes me happy. Other than eating out, we've been living off local food all summer with very few non-local items on our table. We all seem to be in pretty good health, and even the kids now turn up their noses at the sickly pale big-box-grocery-store tomatoes. If asked my opinion on the local food experiment and getting more fully in tune with the planet, I'd have to say we've been blessed.

Harvest

Wow, it's been a month since I last posted! It's hard to believe that much time has gone by already. We've been harvesting things from the long planting beds next to the north fence, which helps mitigate the damage to the greens bed from the neighbors' household cleaner a few weeks ago.

I've gotten a wonderful harvest of edible snow peas this year--and I'm actually still getting a few, though they're nearly done now. This was an heirloom variety called mammoth snow pea; they grow very tall and produce long into the season. We'll definitely be growing them next year; their sprout rate was almost perfect. Beans in the north beds are coming on, as are cucumbers, so soon I'll need to be pickling cukes and canning beans. I can't freeze much more right now, as we still haven't managed to clean out the garage enough for a new chest freezer yet--but we'll have to soon as our beef will be ready in a month or two.

The tomato plants are busily making nice tomatoes, but I'm not sure all the Amish Paste tomatoes are actually Amish Paste. Some look different from others, as though maybe someone at the seed company made a mistake and some are a different variety. Oh, well. They look good, anyway, and I'm sure we'll be able to eat them, so no big deal. The Principe Borghese look great--about the size of small apricots and a nice tangy taste even after being dehydrated. I'll dehydrate most of these, except for the ones we use on pizzas over the next month or two. This particular heirloom variety is the one touted as being best for making sun-dried tomatoes, although I did not sun-dry them. I used the dehydrator. Much faster.

We've also gotten what little broccoli was available, but I'll be removing the plants from the bed soon, to give the beans more room and sun. We've got nice sweetmeat squash coming on as well, growing right out of the mound underneath the apple tree, easily watered from the lawn sprinklers. And a volunteer red winter kale has been producing nicely, which also helps mitigate the greens damage. The largest eggplant is getting a flower finally, and there are peppers on some of the pepper plants I put in between the tomato plants, so we'll at least get a few of those.

The greatest gift of all was a windfall of some free apricots--very small ones, but lots of them, from a big old giant tree that was probably planted near an old farmhouse long ago. There are enough of these sweet little fruits, maybe, to help satisfy my older daughter's craving for apricot jam, though they're far too ripe to process as anything but jam or fruit leather. I'm still hoping for some apricots and peaches to can just as fruit in light syrup, rather than making into jam. But at least the jam for this year will be taken care of, much to my relief. The kids won't feel anywhere near as fruit-deprived over the winter if they can still get strawberry or apricot jam or fruit leather from time to time. And there are always the winter apples, which usually hold out a long time--leaving only a tiny gap between the last of them and the first of the strawberries.

All in all, it isn't too bad a harvest, even with the earlier garden mishap.