New Stuff from the Garden

Ah, now there's a thing of beauty:  my first EVER real ear of corn from my own garden!

I was so tickled when I saw an ear large enough to pick that I had to look for more - I found four.  Admittedly, a couple were really only nibblets, but oh, they were good!

So this is Sunday's harvest:  four ears of corn, two cukes, two tomatoes, two carrots, and a large double handful of beans.

Oh, yes, and the onions.  There they are - four very small, sad braids of onions.  All that is left of the nearly 100 that I planted, and, as you can see, only two or three of any size worth mentioning.  I've been told that perhaps I planted them too late - onions are apparently a light sensitive plant and since they can tolerate the cold, I should plant them in April.  I've never had problems before, but I'm living further south now than my beloved mountains, so I guess my garden will take some rethinking.

On a whim last night I decided to dig a potato plant.  It had two large spuds attached, so I dug a couple more - not so robust.  Stilll, I am optimistic for a good harvest of potatoes later in the season.  

And, yes, those are carrots.  I thinned out the patch a little bit last night.  The greens are all so very tall and bushy, but I know that since I don't thin, the roots will be small and sorry.  It's a bad habit of mine.  Every year I tell myself that next year I will thin...I never do. 

Harvest Time!

The pea harvest was a bust, and the beans are not certainly not going to cause the freezer to overflow (after four harvests, I now have enough to bother getting out the blanching kettle and freezing 'em), but last night I rejoiced with my harvest:

My first two tomatoes finally ripened, and I picked my second cucumber!  For those who might be wondering what is wrong with that cuke (because it is rather pale), it is a variety called Boothby's Blonde, which produces small, pale cukes that have a nice light flavor.  There's nothing bitter about these babies.

I'm also very excited about this:

It may be only an ear of corn, but I've never had luck with corn.  This year I got the corn in late, and then it was dry as a bone, followed by torrential rains.  The cornstalks maybe reach four feet tall at the most - I didn't have high hopes.  So I am just tickled pink that there are several ears forming, and they are already several inches long!


My squash have been going great guns, too.  It seems that this is squash country, for everyone raves about how well squash do here.

 

 Now, perhaps you are wondering why I would harvest such a small onion (see first photo).  I didn't.  Well, I did, but not intentionally - it came up with the weeds.  But take a look at that sorry-looking onion patch:

What started out with such promise has completely fizzled.  I don't understand it.  The only thing I can think is that when it rains, the "soil" (and I use the term loosely) turns into a very clay-like slurry.  Perhaps the plants just couldn't handle the heavy rains.  It could also have been the long hot dry spell, but I did water the garden almost every evening.  Could something be getting into the garden and trampling the onions and pulling them out (many are MIA)?  I just don't know.  It will be interesting to see if any potatoes are produced come digging time - they are in the same soil as the onions.

The dill, while short, is doing nicely.  I don't plant dill for pickling - in fact, I can't even stand the smell of dill.  I plant it for the butterflies, but so far not one has taken up residence on any of the plants.  Next year I will do parsley and fennel - the butterflies like these, too.

Despite a shaky start, the sweet potatoes seem to have recovered and are sending out tendrils all across their section of the garden.  I'm very excited about these - I've never grown sweet potatoes before.

This final photo is here merely for comparison.  Two days ago I took a nearly identical photograph of Toby walking by the sunflowers.  Last night I noticed that the sunflowers were at least a foot taller than they were two days ago (see yesterday's post).  Amazing.