After a Week of Neglect Through a Heat Wave...

My tomatoes have started to ripen. As I've stated before, the Cherokee Green tomatoes were by far the most delicious tomato I've ever grown. Instead of just one plant, I grew two this year. Good thing, because as you can see from the picture below, my Cherokee GREEN is RED!!! I used the seed from the same source as last year. I guess it has some cross-pollinated seed or other variety accidentally mixed in. I won't be upset if it still tastes anything like Cherokee Green though...Well, I hope the other plant is green.

The garden held up relatively well without receiving any care over the last week. It endured the high heat and humidity with only a few setbacks.

A severe rain a few days ago really took a toll on the potato foliage. It's still growing strong though. I can't wait to harvest these!

We had a period of drought, high heat, and humidity last week. I failed to water my new blueberry bushes. I use the hose for all of my plants with the exception of the blueberries since our water is so alkaline. I use rain water for the blueberries instead. I forgot to go back and water them separately. One held up beautifully with the aide of some potato foliage shading it a bit. The other two didn't fair so well. They both had a severe reaction to the shortage of water. :(

STEP 1

The foliage has completely died back. This is so exciting!

STEP 2

Time to dump it. I feel like a kid again. Wait! Could it be?

STEP 3

I found potatoes!!!! I planted one seed potato and yielded about 4 times what I planted. My first potato growing experience has got me hooked. I can't wait to see how the other varieties faired. Especially the ones that were grown in the ground.

Amish Paste tomato with blossom end rot. The only loss so far this season.

I took a peek under my enormous Spirit pumpkin foliage from my two plants this morning. There are three pumpkins!I harvested all of my garlic today. Since I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep up with the watering of my hanging flower pouches full of strawberry plants last week, I improvised. I moved them out of the strong direct sun and hung them on a couple of pepper cages that were staked on top of one another. I decided that the top of the cages would be great to hang my garlic on while it cures. I think I might do the same when I start pulling up some of my onions.

I harvested over seven pounds of cucumbers this morning. This time I used my water bath canner to make these cucumber sandwich pickles. I also used the cukes to start the process of making sweet icicle pickles. For the first step they needed to be quartered and soaked in a brine for a week. I will finish them up next weekend.