Mums The Word...

One of my long dormant gardening interests has always been a passion for mums. It started I suppose with the traditional garden mums that pop up at home centers every fall, but it definitely grew from there once I was introduced to all of the truly amazing cultivars and Japanese shaping techniques known collectively as Kiku. I first ran across them when researching a visit to the NY Botanical Gardens a few years ago. Here are just a few of the amazing shapes:

Kengai: Mum Cascades - NYBG

 

Ozukuri: 1,000 Blooms - NYBG

Ogikui: Single Stem - NYBG

Of course you can't just go out to the garden center and pick these up, so it means planning ahead and special ordering plants via mail order to get started. I went with King's Mums out of Oregon which is one of the largest providers in the country of the special varieties used for the Kiku methods. If you check out their site you'll quickly see that there are a ton of different types and varieties of mums. I decided to start with a sampler pack to get started and have a chance to try out a variety of different types of mums. That way I get a chance to experiment a bit and see what works, what I like, and exactly what it takes to grow the different styles. 

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Bringing in the Harvest

The first flush of the summer harvest has begun! This past weekend we celebrated our very first full scale harvest of something besides the salad greens which we've been enjoying for a couple of months now. (And would still be enjoying if not for the groundhog...)

Here's a quick peek at our first haul:

Broccoli and Cauliflower

 It got SUPER hot here the past couple of weeks which caused the broccoli and cauliflower to start to head towards bolting pretty quickly. This is actually the "seconds" of the broccoli. We had harvested the main heads last week because of the heat.

Yellow Summer Squash

 The green squash got off to a slow start after it had to be replanted, but the yellow squash has been cruising right along. The one on the right is about the ideal size, the one on the left was let go a BIT too long. The problem with squash is that it seems to go from tiny to HUGE overnight!

Bush Beans

This is the first flush of the 2012 bean crop. I was actually surprised that these guys were ready to go before July 4th, but they were nice and plump. I've just finished the second planting of bush beans after the salad greens finished, but I had a few plants in just to bridge the gap before the climbing beans kick in. Speaking of climbing, the climbing beans and the winter squash are both going like crazy:

The tomatoes are really coming along now as well:

On the left, some Razzleberry Hybrids, and on the right some Zeebra heirlooms. (You can already see their stripes developing. After as slow start, the Romas are starting to ripen... just in time for the 4th!:

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First Hive Inspection

Saturday marked 10 days from the arrival of the bees, so it was time to check in and see how they were settling into their new abode. (Special Thanks to Jason who agreed to serve as my photographer so that I didn't have to juggle bees and the camera to document this momentous occasion!)

Feeling like the Michelin Man

SUITING UP

While it is perfectly safe to work around the hive without any protective gear, when it comes to actually opening up the hive body and working on the frames, safety is important, so that means suiting up with the full suit and veil. Honey bees are very gentle, but it is important to remember that you probably wouldn't like it very much either if someone essentially ripped the roof off of your house while you were taking care of your babies either! 

8 frame Super with Plastic Frame

SUPER! 

Once suited up, it is time to gather up all of the necessary equipment. Obviously you want to make sure that you have everything ready to go. Since we're hoping that the bees have pretty much managed to get the hive up and running there is a possibility that they'll already be ready to expand into a new super. I'm using 8 frame medium supers which means that the box itself holds 8 frames or foundations on which the bees will build their comb. Traditional beekeeping used 10 frame deep supers, but those can be pretty heavy to move once they are completely filled, so many home bee keepers are now using the smaller and more manageable 8's. The only downside is that you need more supers. A normal hive will usually need about two 10 frame supers or three 8 frame supers. Today's task is to see how far they've come at building out comb on the frames. If they're working all of the frames, then it is time to give them more space to keep them happy! In my hive I'm using plastic frames in the hive body section of the hive. These are single piece units and you can probably see that they are stamped in what looks to be a honeycomb pattern. The frames are then coated in beeswax so that the bees will more readily accept them. The stamped pattern helps the bees by basically laying out the "road map" for how they should set up the comb. They will build perfectly aligned combs even if there was nothing stamped, but this speeds up the process for the. Think of it as laying the foundation for their buildings. 

Where there's smoke:

Lighting the Smoker Fuel

The other critical piece of equipment is going to be the smoker. Applying small and gentle amounts of smoke to the bees helps to disrupt their alarm / defense responses and keeps them calm during the hive inspection. In this case I'm using "smoker fuel" which is essentially compressed lint from industrial fabric manufacturing. It doesn't really hold an open flame but instead smolders in the smoker can and produces a gentle cool smoke. I've also filled up the large entrance feeder which is the yellow and black thing in the bottom left of the photo. It's full of a 1:1 mix of sugar and water and is what sustains the bees while they are setting up shop. We'll be swapping out the smaller one that we used for the last week. The bees go through a TON of the feed, so having a larger feeder will mean we aren't filling it up multiple times each day!

MORE AFTER THE JUMP!

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Reach for the Sky

Time for a quick veggie garden update. I managed to finally get the rest of the greens planted on Sunday... a week or two behind schedule but they should be fine. At the top of the picture you can see the early romaine lettuce is just about ready for harvesting. Jason will be happy! In the open spaces we'll soon have spinach, swiss chard, radicchio, and more lettuce. tucked into the straw at the top of the bed is the summer and winter squash and cucumbers as well as the okra and sun flowers. To the left all of the cole crops are still very happy and growing away!  The drip irrigation is on during this photo so you can see how well the set up is working.

The Greens Bed... circa 5/20 

Many of the early plantings are well on their way and so I spent most of the morning fashioning their supports for the season:

Tomatoes with stakes and arms in place.

I'm re-using my "Ultomato" stake system from the past few years... I do have to say that it has held up pretty well. The only complaint that I have is that I wanted to swap out the 5' stakes that it comes with with 6' stakes since half of the tomatoes I planted are indeterminate and when I went to do that I discovered that all of the new stakes available are a smaller diameter and the old arms were too big to grab them snugly. After several futile searches at various retailers I just solved the problem by wrapping each of the stakes with duck tape in the area that the arm needed to connect. Not the most ellegant solution, but working for now anyway. Hopefully by next year we'll have relocated the garden to the back, and at that point I'll devise a bit more permanent and re-useable trellis or support system . We'll see!

This is a shot of the egg plant and pepper bed... neither of which need staking just yet, but for some reason I do finally seem to have a few peas trying to make it up. They should have already been up and harvested by now, but they just weren't cooperating earlier in the season. I decided to just let the ones that came up keep going so I made some little tee-pees with some shorter stakes. Well have to see how that turns out. We may or may not ever actually get any peas... that still remains to be seen! Here's hoping!

And then my pièce de résistance (hopefully anyway!)... My bamboo bean trellis:

Bamboo Bean Trellis

In the past I've done single poles and used a round wire ring at the bottom and then strung twine from top to bottom. Since this bean patch is slightly larger and I'm doing three different types of climbing beans I decided to try something different. Instead of supporting 1 sq ft of climbers, each tee pee here will support 4 sq ft of beans. Then I connected the four at the bottoms on either side, the middle on either side, and the top. That gave me support for the twine to be strung up and down which ensures that the beans have plenty of surface area to work their way to the top. In the old set-up by the time the beans got to the top of the pole there the amount of surface area was so constricted that everything turned into a big jumbled mess. Even though there is still less room as they get to the top of this trellis, it still should give them a much better opportunity to space themselves out. I checked on progress today and the beans are all up and well on their way towards reaching up to the bottom rungs to start their ascents!

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Settling In

Spent part of the weekend working on getting the finishing touches put together on the new home for the Bees. After getting them all situated last Wednesday, I decided that the area where they are going to reside needed a bit of sprucing up to make them feel right at home. To recap... this is the before:

Not bad.... but not exactly what the girls were dreaming of.... So a little elbow grease, some plants, and a bit of mulch and we ended up with this:

I worked created a stepping stone path that curves up the hill and around to the back of the hive which is where all of the work gets done from. That defined the edge of a new bed around the base of the tree. I used a reclaimed chunk of concrete as a base for my bird bath and planted the area with some bee balm (naturally), heliotrope, and impatients. In  the bed in front of the hive I planted three hostas, one of which we salvaged last weekend from Jason's house that we are selling. Then I used the old bench base that we found in the yard last year as a pot stand and planted some more impatients. The bees can drink about a liter of water a day, so Jason had the idea of using our old "cat water-er" for them. (The blue thing) I put a piece of broken brick in to keep them from falling in and drowning..... They don't really seem that interested in it, but we'll see. Maybe once it is warmer out and they aren't getting the sugar water they'll be more inclined to check it out.

I worked out there for most of the day on Sunday and the bees didn't really seem to mind which was good. Of course I did my best to stay out of the landing pattern! I did get stung tonight for the first time. It was entirely my fault because I decided to try and feed them again and it was way too late to disturb them. One of the girls got me right on the cheek below my eye. Luckily, other than a bit of redness there wasn't any other reaction so apparently I'm not allergic. Lesson learned!

Here's a short video of the girls at work on Saturday.... if you watch closely you'll see a couple of them coming in with their "hip flasks" full of bright yellow pollen.

I'm looking forward to checking in on them on Saturday which will be my first official "hive inspection" to make sure that the queen is out and laying and that they are pulling out combs. For that I'll need to put on my full suit and fire up the smoker. Should be an adventure!

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Happy Bee-Day

Today we're celebrating the arrival of our very first honey bee colony! Bees are something that I've been interested in for many many years. Up until the move we didn't ever really have room to safely keep a hive around. This year I decided to go ahead and make the investment and get started. It takes a LOT of stuff to get set up, but like any hobby/project once you have the basic equipment it is fairly straightforward. You have to order everything in advance and place the bee orders in the winter, so I've literally been waiting for MONTHS for today.

So right off the bat I'll say that I was setting everything up by myself, in a light rain (bees hate rain), and trying to get done while there was still some daylight left, so the pictures are SKETCHY at best and taken with my phone.

Bee-hive stand

The fist big decision was to figure out where to put the bees. They have a home on the "master plan" but the problem is that the area where they need to live eventually is right in the traffic lane for a couple of other as-of-yet-incomplete projects including replacing the shed. Since bees don't really appreciate a lot of noise and attention I figured it would probably be best if I put them somewhere else for the time being. The absolutely ideal place is down by the windmill, but as that's the lowest point in the yard and was under 3 feet of water during last September's flood I decided that probably wasn't the smartest place either. I settled for a relatively flat spot next to the big walnut tree in the middle of the yard.

Since I was tied up all of last weekend getting Jason's house re-landscaped I was running behind on getting the area prepped and ready so really had to hustle this evening go get it all together. I leveled out the area and laid down six large pavers for my hive stand to sit on. This will keep me from having to mow too close to the hive. I'm pretty sure there was a landscaped bed here at some point, and I'm planing on landscaping around the area with some plants that can tolerate shade and the walnut tree poison and reduce the need to disturb the bees even more.

The hive stand is a bit beefier than it probably needs to be, but a full hive can weigh over 100 pounds, and ideally we'll end up with 2 hives if everything goes well this year, so I wanted to be sure it was sturdy enough. The wood was all left-over from the garden bed project and I didn't even have to cut it. I stained it to match the beds which are more or less adjacent so that everything looks like it belongs.

Special Delivery

The best Priority Mail package ever! The Post Office called just before lunch to let me know that they had some bees for me... I could tell by the guy's voice that he wasn't exactly thrilled about it, so I told him I'd be right up to pick them up. It was pretty funny to see everyone's faces in the lobby when they brought up this buzzing box full of bees. I thought the one customer was going to run out screaming. They had it in a big plastic letter box and the guy carried it out holding it as far away from himself as possible. Everyone just stared when I just reached in and grabbed it and told them thanks and walked out. Mostly they were freaked out because there were a couple of bees on the outside of the box since the swarm attracts other bees if they are in the area. They'll just hang on and wait to see what happens so there's really no need to worry about it. I just sat them on the floor of the car and headed home. I gave them a little fresh sugar water to hold them over until dusk which is when you want to be getting them settled into their new digs.

Successfully Installed 

Here's the hive set up with most of the bees already moved in and getting to work setting up their new home. This is an "English Garden" hive from Brushy Mountain Bee Supply and it has a nice copper top on it that will tie in nicely with the copper on the herb beds and should weather nicely over time. It looks a little small right now because to get started you only use one super (box) until they get established. This is an 8 frame shallow super set up which is a bit more manageable than the traditional deep 10-frame hives that you may have seen in local orchards or farm fields. One of the suggestions that was given in the book that I'm reading was that for people raising bees in the city not to paint the hives the traditional bright white color, so I went with a light cedar colored stain that nicely sets off from the darker stain of the stand and the copper. The yellow thing is an entrance feeder which is full of sugar syrup. the bees have to be fed for about 6 weeks until they've fully established themselves and have had time to build up some honey stores to support the colony. You can kind of see a few bees left in the shipping crate just below the hive. It's impossible to get EVERY bee out of the box so you just leave it sit there and in a matter of time they'll make their own way out and up into the hive.

Checking Things Out

Here's a close-up of the front of the hive. The lighter colored piece of wood is the entrance reducer. This blocks off most of the front of the hive with the exception of the little square that you can see at left. This makes it easier for the bees to defend the hive while they are getting set up and building up their numbers. The bees gathering at the right are ones that were flying around or outside when I closed up the hive. they can tell that everyone else is inside and are figuring out how to get in. Eventually they found the hole and in they went. By nightfall it looked like pretty much everyone was safely inside. We should finally get some sun tomorrow which should make them happy and give them a chance to work on getting the queen eaten out of her cage so she can get to work. After that it will be a few more weeks of getting established before it will be time to try for our first honey!

I'm happy to report that I managed to get everything set and the bees installed without any major incidents or any stings, which I thought was a very big win! I had one slightly tense moment when a bee somehow got inside my veil and was flying around inside right by my face... but I remained calm and carefully let it out and everything else went off without any issues. Everyone who keeps bees gets stung eventually, so I'm prepared for that, I'm just thankful I didn't have to START my adventure with a sting!

Unfortunately I couldn't take photos of the actual process of installing the bees because it pretty much takes all of your attention to manage 500+ bees at one time and get them to do what you need them to do in a relatively short period of time. If you're super interested you can get an idea of what happens by watching the video here: Bee Installation Video from the company that my bees came from. My hive set up is slightly different and so the technique is slightly different, but the general steps/process is the same.

More to come....

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Dive Right In

One of my projects for the past several weeks has been the installation of the garden beds out front, which you can see in one of my earlier posts. In addition to those beds I also constructed to 9' x 14' triangle beds which will anchor the (eventual) back patio. Now that the one walnut tree has been removed, this area gets sun for most of the day, making it an ideal location for housing the herb garden. The site is adjacent to the kitchen door and will be easily accessible when we have the outdoor dining area complete one day.

New herb garden bed. 

Today I finished off the first of the two beds.... It turned into QUITE the ordeal. When I designed the beds I made them twice as tall as the front beds so that there was a more definite visual separation from the lawn since these two triangle beds outline the south side of the future patio and form the book ends for the paths coming down from the future rose garden. Needless to say once they were built I couldn't move them by myself. I also underestimated how much dirt it would take to fill them in. Originally I thought that the bed closest to the house would end up needing to be cut into the slope of the yard pretty significantly, and the plan was that the dirt would then be used to back-fill the majority of the bed. As it turned out, that didn't happen, and I had to actually raise up the far end of the bed just to keep it level and in line with the back slab.

Filling the bed

Well in the process of replacing what little dirt I had actually removed to level the bed I looked up and caught a glimpse of the weeds growing up inside the pool. not looking forward to another summer of spraying and chopping weeds in there I was thinking to myself how I needed to just get in there and clean out the entire mess since I'd have to dig it out one day anyway when I get around to installing my pond. That's when it hit me... I needed DIRT to fill in the herb beds and the pool just happens to be FULL of dirt! Can you say 2 birds... one stone? My only concern was that since the pool is covered in trash and debris I had never really investigated to see what the quality of the fill was. My luck it was filled in with concrete chunks or bricks or something else that would be utterly unsuitable. A few preliminary shovels and things looked promising. 

Getting started. One bucket at a time....

The soil isn't the best, but at least it isn't completely full of rocks. The first few inches are actually pretty decent top soil at this point from all of the years of leaves and weeds rotting in there. The only annoying thing is that I had to carry out the dirt by hand using 5 gallon buckets since I can't get the wheel barrow down in the pool. I managed to get 6 buckets worth of dirt into each wheel barrow load. After literally 50 or more trips back and forth the bed was filled and ready for a top dressing of peat moss and compost. 

After the bed was filled.

I made a dent in the pool, but there's probably PLENTY of dirt left for the second bed and then to level out the rose garden.... 

I tucked in my little herbs, added a bird bath, and installed the post caps. I'll mulch with straw tomorrow to help keep the moisture in the beds, but things are more or less done for this one. My very first truly dedicated herb garden! I couldn't be happier.

One down... one to go.

PS: Did you know you can now sign up to follow my blog via e-mail? Just enter your e-mail in the box at the right and you'll get an e-mail automatically every time I post an update.

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Mysteries of Spring

One of the most exciting things about moving to the new house is just the grand mystery of what may already be part of the landscape and is just currently tucked away, hidden, just waiting for the right time to pop up and make an appearance. Some things like these naturalized crocuses are a welcome sight:

Even more crocuses make an appearance.

It's hard to tell in the photo, but they have pretty much covered a huge area of the back yard with living blanket of white. There are other signs of life too. In the one and only raised bed where it appears that someone at sometime did some gardening, there are tell-tell signs of more bulbs on the way:

Bulbs of some sort starting to poke through.

I hope to use this bed for my tomatoes this year, but for now at least something beautiful seems to be emerging from the tangled mess of bamboo and weeds! I'll take it!

 For every pleasant surprise there are bound to be a few not so great surprises lurking out there:

Gutter Tree

 Trees growing in the gutters for instance. I spent an hour out in the rain up on a ladder trying to do my best to clear out two or more years of debris so that some of the torrential rain would have a way to get off the roof without creating more damage. On the west side of the front porch I found this little 4' tall sapling growing quite happily from the gutter. Needless to say it had to go!

This weekend brought heavy rains,  which in addition to being a good way to see how the land drains and where water pools for future planning purposes, also served as a reminder of why exactly we had to buy flood insurance.

This is a shot late this afternoon of the RAGING river that used to be our little trickle of a creek. It's about 7 feet to the bottom of the bridge. Normally there's about 6" of water running through. It's been raining all day, and I wouldn't be surprised if the water made it up to the bottom of the bridge before all is said and done. On a positive note, it seems to be handling things ok, and we'd still have to have another 3 feet or so before it would be out into the yard. 

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First Signs!

After a VERY warm couple of days last week it looks like there may be hope for the over-grown mess that is currently the new garden. In less that 24 hours the place seemed to suddenly spring to life with the arrival of HUNDREDS of tiny crocuses.

Tiny crocuses make an appearance in the back yard

They are literally everywhere you look. This is one of the patches just randomly appearing in the back yard.

More spring time harbingers

This little clump is coming up right out next to the parking area. Nice to know that as Spring starts to kick it into high gear in the next couple of weeks there may be even more pleasant surprises to come as we get a chance to see what (besides bamboo) is lurking just below the surface!

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New This Week: September Week 4

Well, it's officially almost the end of the main season for the garden. It's kind of shocking to be spending more time pulling things out instead of harvesting. It also visually arresting to see what has been more or less walls of green completely disappear. That said, I did manage another hearty harvest this week. The Kentucky wonder beans are still bearing. I was able to clean and freeze this big batch. The bush beans are done, but the KW's may give one or two more good size pickings before frost.

As you can see from the photo, the eggplants are still going strong, and the banana peppers continue to go like crazy. This batch was pickled up with some jalapeños to make about 2 quarts of pickled peppers. Yum. I now have a whole bag full of frozen habaneros, I still haven't done a single thing with them, but I'm thinking habanero ice cream? Jason also gave me a recipe for habanero bread pudding... sounds interesting... so we'll see.

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New This Week: September 20th

The arrival of fall may be imminent, but that doesn't mean NOTHING new is going on in the garden. Thankfully!! Perhaps the most exciting new arrival is the blooming of the fall crocuses. Until last year, I never knew that crocuses bloomed in the fall. Imagine my surprise when these beauties popped up! I was exceptionally excited to see them this year because I had to move them earlier this spring right in the middle of their growth phase. They were right in the way of the new raised beds, so I had to either try and re-home them or get rid of them altogether. They spent all spring in pots while the new beds went in. Once the leaves faded, I went ahead and planted them out in the border of the bed, hoping they'd be ok.

It looks like they're doing just fine! The winter will be the true test, but here's hoping they come back just as strong in the spring. For those who, like me, aren't familiar with this crocus, they come up in early spring with very wide green leaves. They look somewhat like corn plants, but they only get about 10" tall or so. They don't bloom at all in the spring. Then in the fall, the flowers emerge. Just the flowers, no leaves at all. Very unique! I'm so glad they made it through the summer ok in their new home!

From a planting perspective, there have been a couple of new additions. On the left you'll see the new Gencianas that I just put in. I've never seen this little annual before, but it's a late fall/early winter bloomer here in zone 6, so I'm excited to see how it holds out. It will be nice to have a bit of a splash of color still going as the rest of the summer annuals die back. The photo on the right are the recently started cabbage, lettuce, and spinach seedlings. I think I was pretty late getting the cabbage going, so we'll have to see how they make out. The lettuce and spinach is just now sprouting and that should be on schedule for a good fall crop. We'll see!

Lastly, one of the plants I'm most excited about! While we were on vacation two weeks ago we went to the NY Botanical Gardens. Needless to say, I came back with a list about a mile long of things I wanted to try out. This little guy is Anemone Robustisima. A Japanese Anemone. It turns out that these get planted out in the fall here in the Northeast, so I had a perfect window of opportunity. It was a bit difficult to find, but I ordered a three pack online and got them in this past week. I put two in the back yard and one out front. I just learned this evening that they can take up to two years before they bloom, but I guess like many things you have to wait to get really amazing results. The photo below is what I have to look forward to in a summer or two:

Beautiful single pink flowers on delicate airy stems. (This photo taken at the NY Botanical Garden.) After the trip I also picked up a beautiful little painted Japanese fern that just came today and I'll be planting this week. I also stocked up on a ton of seeds for next year for plants that I was inspired by during our visit, but I'm not going to give away any of those secrets until next spring. That way you'll have something to look forward too as well!

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New This Week: August Week 4

Still playing catch-up! This past week marked the second major harvest of the Roma tomatoes. As you can see, we had quite a few - 9.5 Pounds! Crazy!!! Jason turned all these lovelies into sauce. We sampled it on Tuesday night for the first time and it was absolutely delicious! Made in the oven to caramelize and then run through a food mill to process out the skins. It has a wonderfully rich flavor. I'm hoping we can get enough to make a few more batches to keep us going over the fall/winter!

This week I also harvested the rest of the onions. I've got to say that I was relatively unimpressed by the onion production. They took FOREVER and even then only a very few of them ever really even amounted to much. In what can only be seen as a parallel to real life it actually turned out that the onions with the biggest and most impressive shoots and flower heads actually turned out to be the smallest ones of the harvest. As they say... "The people with the biggest drums don't always lead the band..." (Bonus points if you know where that saying actually comes from). For reference, each of the boards in the photo is about 5 inches wide...

And finally, the rest of the harvest continues rolling in as well. I did another batch of pickled peppers and zucchini bread in an attempt to stay ahead of the tide. It certainly has been a bountiful summer!

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New This Week: August Week 3

On the non-consumable side this week was the installation of a new evergreen specimen the cryptomeria japonica:

This is a beautiful slow growth cedar native to Japan (as the name might suggest!). This particular cultivar has a very unique branching habit. The branches extend out into what to me looks like pom-pom clusters of the needles. Eventually this should be a nice round mound. I needed to get some more winter-hardy stuff going so that as the summer/fall flowers die off I'll actually have something to look at this winter! I saw this plant featured on The Garden Guy with Paul James on HGTV a couple weeks ago and decided that I'd give it a shot. It's hardy in Zone 6, but I'm not sure how it will do in a pot. My other evergreens seem to do fine, so here's hoping!!

From an edible perspective this was the week of the pepper. I know this photo isn't the greatest... but it does give you an idea of the scope of the pepper varieties now coming to the table (clockwise from lower left):

• Another huge crop of banana peppers. I've already pickled this bunch since the last effort was so successful!
• Beautiful and yummy bell peppers.
• Jalapeno peppers that also ended up pickled (most of them).
• Orange habanero peppers... nothing yet... but they're destined for salsa as soon as the next batch of tomatoes ripens.
• Red sweet peppers. These guys (and a few of their colleagues) were roasted up for the baba ganoush and fresh spaghetti sauce we made this week.

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New This Week: August Week 2

Ok.... so I'll admit that I'm starting to get a bit worn out by ALLLLLL the fresh produce! (Really? Did I say that???) Well maybe just tired of the weekly photo session. This week I admit I just started washing, packing, and eating stuff instead of gathering everything together for the obligatory photo. (Hey... I had to cram the entire weekend of work into 4 hours... so take it easy on me!)

I did capture a few interesting things though:

• After one rather serious thunderstorm the cherry tomatoes were obviously out of control and threatening to take down everything around them. I did some SERIOUS pruning this weekend. Keep in mind that we only have two plants... still I filled 2 1/2 55 gallon trashcans with vines. Some of them were 15 - 20ft long. YES, that is feet. YES, I did measure. I know! I didn't believe it myself. In the process I managed to harvest a whopping 6.5 pounds of chocolate cherry tomatoes! CRAZY! This is on top of what we've already picked. I think at this point I'd estimate that we've managed to pick about 40 lbs all together. All from two tiny tomato seeds.... I know! Hard to believe. Anyway, the evil white flies have found them now, so I'm not sure how much longer they'll be going. We'll have to see. I'm sure the big trim probably didn't help much either, but at this point I figured we've certainly enjoyed them for long enough that if they don't keep going I'm not going to be terribly disappointed.

• The okra continues to be the surprise of the summer. I mentioned before that I've never grown it before... so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, but I swear the stuff grows like crazy and is just producing non-stop. I don't know how tall it is "supposed" to be when it has reached full maturity, but this stuff is now taller than me! (MUCH taller than Jason as you can see in the photo.) It's not a camera angle thing. He's literally standing right next to the stalk. Wacky! Boy are the fast at setting pods too! I picked four last night and by tonight another four were ready to go. I've never seen anything like it before in my life! The only thing I'll do differently next year is to plant them all at once so that there's a consistent amount on hand. This year I planted two and then another four a few weeks later. They're all going strong, but it is taking a couple of days to get a pound or two for cooking. Next up on the okra rotation is a Cajun okra/shrimp/tomato dish. Then maybe pickled okra??? Who knows!
  
• Overheard in the Martin/Whetstone kitchen this week: "Is there any way we haven't had eggplant?" (And the answer ended up being yes... but not for long... Jason unearthed a recipe for Baba Ganoush... hmmmm we'll see how that goes.)

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New This Week: August Week 1

This has been another VERY bountiful week. (I'm getting very good at coming up with things to do with eggplant at this point!

Here are a few snapshot's from the haul... (Clockwise)

• Carrots round two. This batch as a whole wasn't as big as the ones from last week, but still very yummy!
• 5 giant black beauty eggplants, some banana peppers, bell peppers, okra, and a couple more zucchini. (Austin was over this weekend and we made a batch of zucchini bread which was a huge hit!)
• A huge bowl of the chocolate cherry tomatoes. Probably a good 3 POUNDS worth. Half of these we shared with Jason's sister.
• Over 15 Pounds of tomatoes!!! Jason pureed the Romas and froze them so he can make some homemade sauce later on. We gave some away, and cooked up almost all of the rest.

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