Garden Lessons

This morning I did a big harvest as my tomatoes are ripening on the vine. Since I have so many I let them stay on the vine until they are really red. This is providing us with the sweetest and most fragrant fruits. You know that real tomato smell is something you can’t get except when you just pick a really ripe tomato.

All the meals around hear have been tomato centric. Yesterday I made gazpacho and tomato pie. Also BLT for lunch and Russ put cherry tomatoes in his eggs this morning. I did make some okra for dinner tonight to go with our leftovers from last night. It is so easy to be a vegetarian when you have a prolific garden, except for that perfect candied bacon on the BLT. So not quite a vegetarian.

I pulled out my zucchini and yellow squash plants this morning. I had gotten a boring worm in the stems. Apparently my organic ways had not worked. I replanted a few zucchini and am doing my best to keep the worms off the stems. We shall see how this round does. I did get plenty of zucchini, but only a few rounds of yellow squash.

My lettuce is bolting, but since there is nothing else for me to plant in its place until next month I am just keeping it. The peppers are prolific as well as the cucumber.

I am very happy I put the fence in a foot an a half from the back wall because I am able to walk along the back of the fence and pick all the things that are growing over the fence. The very best plant I have is a cherry tomato plant I bought at the farmers market for $1.50 at the end of March. So far I have had at least 15 pounds of tomatoes from it and there are at least 200 tiny tomatoes still on it.

Pole beans have been good, except on the front where the vines grew outside the fence and the deer came and ate them. I need to buy some more Parmesan Cheese because the basil needs to be turned into pesto. I have already made a few quarts that I have frozen into smaller portions, but there is always more basil.

I am most thankful for my beautiful zinnias. They have been a huge attraction to bees who have done a great job pollinating everything. I leave the seed heads long after the flowers are spent, rather than dead heading them because the bees adore those spent flowers. Anything we can do for bees we should all do.

I should have weighed my harvest everyday, but didn’t think of that idea until today. Most of the time I take photos of my basket. Today’s was especially beautiful.