June has gone out with a roar, the past two days have been over 100 each day, accompanied by high winds or lightning storms (with no rain) in the middle of the night.
Harvest Summary:
1/2 of a carrot box
Carrots in a box
Carrots with tops
Carrots ready for cleaning
Carrots cleaned and ready to make hot pickles out of, or eat fresh
haricot verts and half runner beans – multiple pickings
Green Beans!
summer squash – multiple days
One day’s worth…
cucumbers – many many cucumbers
Another day’s pickins’
8 tomatoes so far, and more coming quickly
Potatoes – 1 plant of red pontiac and 1 plant of kennebecs, all were yummy
Potatoes
Even More
And again
And lastly!
Some of the tomato are having some worm bite problems. Most of them look like bites that happened before we sprayed BT. The odd thing is that I have only seen 1 caterpillar on the tomatoes and that was weeks ago. We also removed many of the lower stems that are continuing to have fungal problems. Tomatoes in NC almost always get these. We sprayed copper fungicide on the plants, along with calcium/magnesium just to guard against blossom rot – so far none of the tomatoes are showing any signs of BER.
We removed a patty pan squash plant whose stem had deteriorated too much after we cut out the damn SVB caterpillar a couple weeks ago. Now we’re down to just 4 summer squash plants all of which have some damage from SVBs but that are still holding out.
A potato box
The potato plants are starting to die back, especially the pontiacs, and the skins are becoming more fully formed than on a “new” potato. From this point we can harvest potatoes at will, eating them along the way.
We trimmed and cleaned the garlic and put it up in the basement. All in all we’re happy with the garlic harvest this year. Next year we’re likely to cut back to just 1 box of garlic (we cut down from 2 to 1.5 this year), and we’ll still have enough to get through the year. The onions are still curing; we’re planning on putting them up next week if they have finished.
The tomatoes taste great! This morning I made biscuits in my new convection oven, and hot fresh tomato biscuits with butter and salt and pepper are one of life’s true pleasures.
Pictures do not include the harvesting of a good sized yellow squash and 3 cucumbers that we gave to a neighbor who dropped by to tour the garden.
Yesterday morning (Saturday) we got out to the garden shortly after 7 am to give everything a good drink. Today looks to be just as hot, though it’s now supposed to drop back down to the balmy mid 90s tomorrow. The plants this morning look like they’re doing ok.
Garden 1
Tomatoes on the vine
Garden 2
A melon! We have several coming along
Figs on the tree
Front boxes in the steamy muggy morning
Tags: North Carolina, Southern, Tomato, Victory Garden
July 2, 2012 at 10:58 am |
What a gorgeous harvest. Don’t know what happened but none of my carrot seeds germinated yet, may be they are just late.
July 2, 2012 at 2:50 pm |
Nice harvests! You’ve got a ton of carrots! My cucumbers aren’t very happy this year- not sure why. I’m looking forward to mid 90′s weather and no more 100+ degree weather.
July 2, 2012 at 6:00 pm |
Fantastic harvest. I love the pictures of your garden. It’s great to hear about gardening adventures in different parts of the country. But I’m sure glad I don’t have your pest problems. We are always hot and dry in the summer so we don’t see many pests.
July 2, 2012 at 10:51 pm |
The pics of the garden really convey the sense of heat – must be the steam and brightness of the light. the heat does not seem to be slowing the garden down though based on all the bounty you brought in (again) this week!
July 3, 2012 at 9:51 am |
What a great week for you! Looks like your garden is holding out in spite of the heat.
July 3, 2012 at 10:52 pm |
Coming along! I like how you show the carrots when you pull them, half processed and ready for the table, sometimes its lots of work to get to the finished process. Yum.