August in the garden

July went by in a blur of weeding and canning. We have put up tomatoes, tomato sauce, corn (not from the garden-- I find corn hard to grow), crowder peas, lima beans, tomatillos, cucumbers, and we are harvesting peppers. We also have pie pumpkins, butternut squash and a mystery winter squash piling up in the kitchen.

The house reeks of garlic as I try my hand at making pickles the fermented way for the first time. There is a huge bag of tomatillos in the freezer as I wait for cilantro's fall season before making salsa. There are about 30 jars of potatoes in the pantry. So I haven't been blogging, but I have been busy!

Squash bugs recently attacked Alexis' bed of luffas, pumpkins and butternut squash. She applied the pesticide powder with a picture of a cow on it after a consultation with Merrill at Stone Bros. We also got flea beetles on the eggplant. I am not sure if they're why we aren't getting eggplant. There is only one fruit on five plants. The flowers keep turning gray and falling off. If I liked eggplant more, I would look into it. And the crowders have aphids. I sprayed them with water until they came off a few days ago. I need to get out there and see if they are back.

Amber and Alexis came out a couple of weekends ago when we had two lovely 75 degree days and we pulled a pile of weed so huge that I was too ashamed to throw it over the fence into Amber and Tom's backyard. So it is still sitting in my backyard!

Oh and here is a great story. I harvested a bunch of dried lima beans and was inside hulling them. It turns out that ANTS will live in the pods. Eeeeewwwww. I would crack the pods open and hundreds of ants would pour out. It was completely repulsive.

There is lots more news, but I will stop with this excitement-- Alexis and Will and I built a top bar beehive last weekend!!! Bees will move in in March or April!

Early on a Sunday

I woke up at 6 am and headed out to the garden. It has been over 90 degrees everyday for weeks and so I have to get out there early to avoid heat stroke! I weeded the front yard bed, which contains peppers and some volunteer potatoes that I missed in last year's harvest, also some tough parsley left over from when the front yard bed was the winter garden and today I noticed that kale has started coming up as well. Every day I learn more about how tough plants are! I used to baby them and cry if something bad happened. Now I cover them with mulch and tell them I will see them in a few weeks!

The peppers are doing better this year than in past years so far. They generally don't thrive until fall when it cools down.

I am a member of the Bull City Garden Exchange, a listserv/community group about gardening in Durham. We have been discussing two of my pressing questions of the summer--pepper difficulty and sterile squash family plants. Apparently Stone Brothers staff recommended calcium for the peppers. And someone said they hand pollinate squash family plants with a paint brush. Sigh. I guess it is time to enhance the sex lives of 30 or so pumpkin, luffa, cucumber and watermelon plants. Woo hoo!

And about those squash plants: I am very nearly holding my breath with hope; Alexis put a plate (made of corn!) under the first Moon and Stars watermelon yesterday!!!! I really hope the plants thrive this year. They got hit by some dread disease last year and the teeny melons rotted on sickly vines. Apparently the rotted melons decided they wanted another go at life and volunteered this year.

In other squash related news: I harvested the first Yamato cue yesterday!!!!!

Harvest update

Just a quick note to say that I have harvested a ton of green beans from the half runners, the first yamato cucumber has appeared in teeny tiny glory (the plant and I shared a hug; I love love love cucumbers), and the weird sterile squash plants are huge and have now produced 2 unidentifiable fruits from amongst the 10 or so plants. So weird.