Finally!

Another delicious ear of Serendipity sweet corn straight from the garden. Still soooo good that I didn't even have to boil it. Amazing. Unfortunately the drought is taking its toll on many of the stalks out there. I've been trying to hand water every night, but the high heat and humidity is winning this battle. Luckily we FINALLY got a little bit of rain this morning. I'm hoping for more, but the sun just came out as I was typing this. Where's a good old downpour when you need it?

Onions and Today's Harvest

My first Kellogg's Breakfast tomato. Sliced and made into a delicious, simple tomato sandwich. My impression: It's good with mayo and a tad of salt. I wouldn't care for it as much plain. The flavor is much too mild. I like mine more sweet with a bit of tartness. This was the first one I have ever tasted so perhaps the next ones will be a bit more flavorful. These are up in the air in regards to returning next season. They have some huge positives though: disease resistant, large, no cracking, and high yields. Okay, I convinced myself. They'll be back. Today I picked 2 Salad Bush cucumbers. Each over a pound. My daughter devoured tons of cherry tomatoes. I've never seen a 2 year old eat so much of one thing at a time. She loves tomatoes...red, orange, still green. She doesn't discriminate. Right now the Sun Golds and Isis Candy ones are ripe. The Sun Golds are by far the better of the two. The Isis Candy are much too bland. They won't be back next season. Instead I will be adding another Sun Gold or two to keep up with my daughters appetite.
I also let the kids dig up two of my Russet Burbank potato plants that had died back in the raised beds. The Russet Burbanks in the ground are still going pretty strong. The yield was good, but I know it would have been much better if I watered on a regular basis. Especially since it is so hot, humid, and we never seem to get any rain.
We also harvested the last of the onions. I should have held out a few weeks ago with part one of the harvest. I rushed it. These are significantly larger. I'm still learnin'.

Corn and Potatoes

I had been outside at 8 am, 9am, 10 am, 11am, and on and off throughout the evenings shaking the tassels of all of my Serendipity corn plants, but had only noted any pollen falling twice. The silks on some of the ears have turned brown like the picture below. I rubbed the outside of the husks before picking this ear of corn. It felt like lots of kernels were missing. No surprise since the heat had seemed to mess up pollen production. Nothing I can do about that, so I decided to pull back some of the husk and give the corn the thumbnail test. Yep. Milky juice came out of the top kernel. It's time.
I grabbed the husk, pulled it back slowly. No kernels, no kernels, oh no, I was right, no kernels, KERNELS! I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. Look what I got! So tasty that I ate it fresh from the garden...I've never done that before. No boiling needed. It was crisp and sweet. Absolutely delicious! What a great first experience with growing corn.
My Yukon Gold potato flowers. So pretty.

Reaching New Heights

One of my mixed gourd plants and a Baby Bear pumpkin are reaching for the stars. Both have climbed two-thirds of the way up one of my American Holly trees. The vines are now over 30 feet of the ground and climbing. How am I going to harvest those?
Long Storage Sampler from Dixondale Farms. Not as big as I had hoped. I still have a few in the garden of bigger size. Unfortunately we went on vacation for a week right when they were bulbing and we were experiencing a pretty good drought. I'm sure they would have done better with (1) more regular watering during the drought, (2) better soil preparation, and (3) if I left them in the ground a few weeks longer. You get what you give. I still consider my first attempt at growing onions a success...and a good learning experience.

Corn

It's yet again in the 90s. 93 to be exact. This heat sucks for the corn. Every day I go out to try and hand pollinate it and NO pollen falls. Ugh. I have two ears with silks on almost every stalk and NO pollen. I hate this heat!

Relish and...again!

I just finished canning some dill relish for the first time. Exciting. Plus, at 2 pm I had another hummingbird sighting! What a fantastic day!

Hummingbirds and Butterflies

The kids and I get home after running some errands. My son gets to the back window and yells, "Mommy. Look at that bird!" Expecting to see a robin, cardinal, or other common backyard bird, I peek out. A female ruby-throated hummingbird! My second sighting in my yard this season. I'm sure there would have been more sightings, but the sweltering heat and humidity has kept us prisoner indoors. Of course I place out all five feeders instead of the three I've been maintaining. Then my son tells me that he wants to go on a butterfly and bird watching trip in the backyard. We saw this lovely spicebush swallowtail on our adventure.

Todays Harvest and More

My 2 year old daughter and I picked these tomatoes this morning. A combination of Box Car Willies, Celebrity, Cherokee Green, and Sun Golds. As you can see, my daughter can't keep her hands off of them. She ate almost half of these shortly after taking this picture. That's my girl!
"Shell" garden- Blue Lake pole beans along the walls, Salad Bush cukes, a volunteer marigold, and th remainder of my onion plants.

The corn started to tassel, but there were no ears on the stalks. I wasn't sure where the corn pops up. Now I know. There are two ears developing from between the leaves and stalk. Pretty cool.

Below are my sunflowers. Looks like something really finds the leaves tasty.

Most of my onion harvest. I think I pulled some of them too soon. The leaves had fallen over and had some yellowing on the tips. Oops. This was my first season growing onions, so I'm still learning.

Beauty and Sadness.

Golden Acre Cabbage
Despite being planted very late in the season, long periods of drought, high heat, and high humidity this cabbage is still developing a nice head.
Spirit Pumpkins
Sadly, vine borers have found my two pumpkin plants. I had three nice pumpkins developing on them. Looks like we'll be buying Jack O Lantern pumpkins again this season.

Red Norland Potatoes

I dumped my three gallon container in which I planted two small seed potatoes.

The harvest. The largest is about that size of a golf ball.

Spicebush Swallowtail on Royal Red butterfly bush.

Vanilla Ice sunflowers are opening.

Tiger Swallowtail on Royal Red butterfly bush.

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.