New veggies coming in

Bringing in the first picks of the season is always exciting to me.  The first radishes and lettuce are like manna from heaven.  I enjoy the sweet, little Alpine strawberries each day as they produce just enough to satisfy the taste buds.  The peas are producing and are even starting to show the signs of decline with the warmer weather.  These are my "quick" crops which I can have two or even three rounds of crops before the summer produce starts rolling in.

My 4th of July tomato has only green fruit on it.  The cabbage is not quite full headed.  The green beans have been blooming and are now bearing tiny little beans on my first crop of bush beans (I planted three bush bean varieties two weeks apart from each other to space the crops out for fresh eating).  The 8 ball zucchini are the size of large marbles.  I plucked several pickling cucumbers off the vine for the first real picking this year.  A few warm, sunny days will push many of these to full ripeness.  Of course, I will probably miss them while on a camping trip.  Like a working mother missing her babies first steps, I will enjoy my first beans as the first beans that I get to eat.  I will probably have more than enough zucchini to eat and then some.  The cucumbers will be there, too.  I will miss that first vine ripe tomato, though, as that is like tapping the keg on the new beer of the season.  I shall survive.

My daughter will be my caretaker while I enjoy some much needed time off work.  She has been working in a garden center at a big box hardware store this season.  After years of scooping custard, she was ready for a change.  She has been trained to water and care for plants from a stern teacher, someone other than myself.  It is fun to think that I don't have to rely on the careful eye of experienced gardeners in the neighborhood with my daughter on the job.   

I held off on publishing this post until after vacation for various reasons.  The garden came through great, very few fatalities considering an 18 year old was facing her first time alone and managing mom's garden.  This was compounded by the fact that we had no rain and the temps hit 103 degrees one day.  She has a full-time job working in a garden center (she's a newbie at this), but she came home and took care of business here as well.

I picked the first 4th of July tomato on July 21st.  The rest of the tomatoes were just buds when I left, but the heat and sun have set so much fruit that they didn't look like the same plants.  The onions were mostly fallen over so the tops have all been pushed over as well (see onion harvesting and other).  The beans that I thought would be ready got picked, but there was a whole bunch more ready for picking on my pole beans which became part of a post-camping supper.  

Since there is dill coming in, I may have to do some dilly beans which I posted the recipe for in the same link as onions (above).  I saved some dill before vacation in a jar with white vinegar in the frig.  This technique worked very well last year to preserve the dill until the vegetables were also ready.  My vines of everything else are going everywhere!  I am spending some time to separate and nip the tips to control where some of them are going.  Lots of flowers but no fruit yet. The pickling cukes are also doing well, the window box cukes hated the heat, the ones I nestle against the wall by the tomatoes are also starting to form very nice fruits.  I had to pick and slide the first one out between the wire trellis and the wall.  Any bigger and it wouldn't have made it out.  

This is truly the time of the garden race.  Enjoy the fruits of yours.

A little of this and that...

The weather was beautiful on Sunday so I was able to open the windows and turn on the stove.  The first round of beans have been canned a dilly beans.  I have added the recipe from the Ball Canning and Freezing book which has been by my side for over 25 years.  It came with my pressure cooker and I use it all the time.

I ran across something somewhat alarming while out in the garden picking beans so I picked around the affected plants and did them last.  After some research, I decided I damage them while using the Weed Dragon to kill some weeds along the fence somewhat near the beans.  If anyone thinks otherwise, chime in and let me know.

The heat has been a killer and I dread what the water and electric bill will be from this heat wave.  I have been looking around at how other municipalities are dealing with tree watering, as Milwaukee has been trying to keep the new stuff going with water trucks.  I saw some water bags along the boulevards in West Allis on their new trees.  Alverno College had these water bins around their trees to do the slow soak.

The onions started bending over before vacation so I pushed them all down.  (See Onions post from 8/16/11) After a week or so of dying back, I pulled the plants, trimmed the roots and cut the tops to about 2-3" over the onion bulb.  I cured them in the trays in the garage for most of the period (it was just too darn hot for man and onion in that sun).  I pulled them out in the sun on the milder temperature days to dry them and now they are ready for storage.  Store onions in a cool, dry, dark location.  It is a beautiful crop that I am happy to have.  Now I have to get some lettuce in the ground for fall harvest.