The tomatoes are coming! The tomatoes are coming!

 

Yesterday was the weekly CSA pickup day. The baskets contained beans, peppers, jalapenos, a purple kohlrabi, cherry tomatoes, and even a REAL standard tomato--the first ones to ripen! The picture above is the FIRST tomato I found in the garden. There was just the one, mostly ripe, and our family sliced it up to eat for supper. Yesterday I found about 6 more smaller ones. The heat will really get these guys coming! There are tons of green tomatoes up there, so I'm looking forward to a good harvest.

The rain has me a little concerned, though. It has been very wet and humid here in SE MN. Various fungi are sprouting up in the middle of lawns, in the mulch, and elsewhere. There has been a bit of blight showing up on the tomatoes and the peppers are even showing some leaf drop. The melons and cucumbers are loving it, though. I might have to do a bit of judicious pruning to keep the tomato plants in check and allow them more airflow to try to remove and head off some of the blight. Thankfully, it is not the late blight that is hitting parts of the country. This is the early blight which shows up as spots on the leaves, very common but usually preventable with mulching. The blight spores are in the soil and splash up on the plants during rain. My entire tomato patch is well-mulched, but with the immense rains, it seems that there must have still been some soil splash.

The peppers are not doing as well as they usually do, either. Many of the fruits are getting sun-scald from the lack of leaf cover. This is very frustrating since it means harvesting the peppers before they have a chance to ripen to that beautiful red, orange, or yellow that I love. A couple of the new varieties I planted this year are faring better than the others--Revolution and Flavorburst. Revolution is putting out some huge blocky peppers! Flavorburst are a paler green, almost yellow. As you can see from the photo, some of the peppers are just odd-shaped. These tend to be the New Ace. New Ace are not my favorites, but they usually can be depended upon for plentiful and early yields. They seem to be the worst hit by the sun-scald this year, plus the odd shapes. The kids get a kick out of them, though. 

The planting continues... yesterday I planted a bunch of fall crops--chinese cabbage, pac choi, rutabaga, turnips, and kale. There will be more planting occurring through the next few weeks, too! We had a lot of rain this morning, so that puts a hold on re-working some areas, but second crops of  beans, peas, and lettuce will be going in right away, along with more kohlrabi (hopefully the rabbits don't find them again!), beets, chard, radishes and carrots. The first plantings of most of those are just being getting ready for harvest now, except for the lettuce, which all bolted a few weeks ago. The lettuce can be a finicky germinator in the warm summer, but we'll see what happens. That might have to wait until later in August.

You might have noticed a new addition to the blog--you can now subscribe to receive updates via email! How handy, eh?! Just type in your email addy in the block to the upper right. The FeedBurner service will send you a confirmation email which you need to respond to in order to be signed up. I'm not collecting email addresses, so no worries there! 

Enjoy the heat! Summer is quickly slipping by!

Testing Feedburner--blog posts sent to your email

Test. Test. Test. :-)

I set up a FeedBurner account with hopes that friends/followers who want to get updates via email can do so! Well, let me know if you get this... comment please! To get email updates (daily digest style), just enter your email address in the box at the upper right, under the title pic. It will send you a confirmation email to which you will need to respond. Good luck! Hope this works!

Back from vacation... time for garden bounty!

Our family was able to sneak away for a few days in the Northwoods of MN. We got back to find out that our area had some mega-rain, and then we had a doozy of a storm last night with about another inch! I went to the garden this evening, in the cool of the day and did some weeding. The ground is definitely wet, and the weeds are loving it! I couldn't believe what just 5 days can mean to some very vigorous weeds. But the plants that I WANT to grow are also doing great! I think you could probably see growth on the squash if you stood there for 5-10 minutes! Same with the cukes. AND I even found the first full-size tomato tonight. I think it was a Rutger (though not sure, since it was in the cherry tomato row... hmmm, a mystery!) and it was yummy. We sliced it up to have with our chicken dinner. 

The chickens were the last of our 2009 broilers. I just cooked them in the crockpot since I knew our day would be busy with cleanup from our camping trip. And it was... I think we washed 7 loads of laundry today, and still have another 5 or so to go! That's what happens when you take 8 people on a camping trip and it rains... every day... Ah well, it's to be expected "up north."

 

This week's CSA baskets will contain some cherry tomatoes (if they hurry and ripen), some beans, green onions, peppers, and maybe even an eggplant or two. The heat is good for the tomatoes--they love heat and ripen better when the nights stay above 70. So, they will soon be coming along. The corn is also looking pretty good, although the recent storms have cause a lot of blowdown in the corn patch. Nothing was snapped off, though, so it should be fine even if it doesn't look pretty. Ripe corn is still a ways off, but it will taste OH so good!

Hang in there, CSA members! Things are trying to get ready for you to eat!!! :-)

Mud and rain and such

Well, since the weather seems to think we need even more rain, I went out between showers today and planted. Yep, in the mud. By the time I was finished up, the soles of my shoes were about an inch thicker from the mud (and that's even after scraping them off a few times). So, recently planted are some squash plants and more squash (seed-form) in hills: Burgess Buttercup, Eastern Rise, and a mystery squash ("Gold" or "Sweet Dumpling" or both--a donation from a high school ag department).

The potatoes also went in today. I know... I know... everyone says they should be planted on Good Friday. And this year it was even warm enough on Good Friday to do that! Well, this is one of those unconventional things that I'm doing since it worked before. Two years ago I was a good girl who put in a mountain of potatoes as close to Good Friday as possible. Nothing. I think I got out 20 pounds of spuds from the 20 pounds of seed potatoes I planted. Not a great return. Last year, I bought the seed potatoes, cut them and promptly forgot about them until almost everything else was planted! I threw the 5 pounds or so in the ground (didn't want to spend more on seed potatoes than I spent on store potatoes if they weren't going to do anything!) and HOLY COW--I had tons of taters! Ok, maybe not tons... but harvested at least 20 pounds or more. So, this year I wasn't sure if I was going to plant any or not. (I tend to like planting reliable crops.) Last week decided to go for it. Farmers Seed and Nursery in Faribault still had seed potatoes so had the kids pick up 20 pounds--mix of Red Norland and Red Pontiac.  So, let's hope for the best.

Let's also hope we get some drier and warmer weather. It's too wet to try to weed, so the weeds are really starting to get crazy. Two good days with the scuffle hoe would do some amazing things! 

Strawberries!

This is the first year we've been able to reap the benefits of the hundreds of strawberries plants we've attempted to get started through the last 6 years or so! The reason is because we finally are able to deter the marauding deer that have (up until last summer) eaten every last plant down to nothing. A gardener can fall into the depths of despair when faced with a bed full of stems with no leaves. But, since we put the fence around the garden, and then covered the plants with Agribon spun fabric and straw over winter (further protection since the deer DID jump the fence--in multitudes--over the winter) we are finally getting the first tastes of what seems like 6 years of hard work! :-) This is supposed to be the time before one can expect apples off of new trees, not strawberries off of plants! haha! But seriously, the plants we put in last year are doing quite well and we even planted about 200 more this year so that next year I'm hoping we're swimming in berries!

Our CSA members will be enjoying a taste of these little gems this week, and hopefully next week. We only have 4 good rows producing right now (some are earlier than the others), so we'll see what we can do.

Wow! I LOVE summer!

CSA nights start next week! WHEEEEEEE!!!

This is some of the amazing lettuce that is coming out of the garden right now!

My family and I spent a lot of fun and satisfying time in the garden this weekend. We are continuing to plant more and more crops as the weather keeps warming up, and getting to harvest some things, too!!! The first crop (as usual) is lettuce--the photo above is actually of THINNINGS we took out of the lettuce beds! That's right--this is just the beginning. The heads of romaine and buttercrunch won't be ready for a few weeks yet. By then we'll be planting more lettuce for lettuce blends. YUM YUM YUM.

We also discovered that some of the strawberries are starting to ripen! The kids and I picked the dozen or so that were completely ripe and promptly ate them (gardeners' prerogative, you know!) We will be sharing with our CSA members, though... don't you worry! This year we planted enough new berry plants to DOUBLE the strawberry patch. I'm so excited to finally have a strawberry patch--this is the first time we've been able to thwart the deer and keep the plants going to harvest. 

I am so excited with how well the garden is coming along this year. It promises to be a bountiful summer!

Dream gardening!

I have seen my dream garden--and it is BEAUTIFUL! This week I had the opportunity to travel to Heritage Farm, home of Seed Savers Exchange, in Decorah, IA, with my best friend. Our morning trip was undertaken for the purpose of purchasing pepper and tomato plants to round out our gardens. What we discovered was our "perfect farm." Heritage Farm is nestled in the idyllic setting among the rolling hills of northern Iowa. In mid-May the hills are bright green with freshness and life. We saw some of the Farm's herd of White Park cattle, including some of the most precious calves I have ever seen. The photo above was taken from the barn, looking over this beautiful garden and the Visitors Center/Store.

 Hannah and Emily at Heritage Farm

If we had had the time, we could've spent the entire day wandering around. As it was, we were on a time crunch--both of us being busy moms with duties to tend to at home. We brought our younger daughters and Kris' baby with us. The girls had fun exploring the chicken coop. Both of them are familiar with chickens and recognized some of the breeds, since we both have flocks that they help tend. After choosing our plants and a few packets of seeds that we couldn't pass up, we had a quick picnic lunch near the stream before heading back north. It was a wonderful day--enjoying time to chat on the drive, passing a few horses and buggies as we traveled through Amish country, and getting a glimpse of the "perfect farm" that we wish our small holdings could someday emulate.

So, what did I purchase??? Well, I was looking for more Carmen sweet peppers since I didn't end up with as many plants as I'd like from my planting. They didn't have any Carmen, but I decided to try Tolli's Sweet Italian--"This sweet red Italian heirloom is one of our all-around favorites for fresh eating and canning recipes. Great added to tomato sauces. Large, dependable yields of 4–5" long tapered fruits." I also picked up some King of the North bell peppers, a dependable large bell pepper that I wasn't able to order seed for this year. Then for fun, I picked out Sweet Chocolate and Purple Beauty peppers, and Purple Tomatillos (just imagine the colorful salsa or pico de gallo!). Emily picked out some sunflower and nasturtium seeds plus a pack of petunias to plant in her garden.


What a fun day!