You know it's summer when tomatoes start popping up on windowsills!
As usual, I had completely forgotten how large tomato plants can get, and neglected to get any of them (a total of three plants) staked properly. These two tomatoes are from a whole branch of a plant that I found barely still hanging onto it's mother plant, and on the ground. The branch looked fine, as if the tomatoes might ripen even if I left them right there, but I took these two off to let them ripen inside. Black Brandywine, the only eating tomato that I grow. Although that might have to change. The plant of this variety gets far too large for my tiny yard, and starts blocking sun on everything to the north of it. If you've got a fabulous fresh eating variety that grows on a diminuitive plant, please let me know.
I am having the same, even worse, problem with Amish Pastes, see the photo below, which has been cropped to the edges of the plant. You can see my repeated and clap-trap attempts to keep it aloft by installing somewhat concentric circles of small trellises around it. It's a good thing I have a lot of those trellises!
I will, however, have lots and lots of tomatoes, despite these problems.
On other garden news fronts, I will finally have some peppers this year; the lemon jalapenos are already turning yellow and I just had one in an omelet. One of my three eggplant varieties - I think it is Little Fingers - has lots of blossoms, but the other two varieties have none. Heavy Hitter Okra is producing half a dozen pods a week at this point, which is plenty for me really, but I'm hoping for more robust yields soon.
My bonanza this year has been in Bush beans! I got lots of those frozen. I also have had far more raspberries and blueberries than I can eat, so lots of those are frozen too, waiting for cooler weather to can them in.
I got a little cray cray with strawberries this year, and planted an 8 by 2 foot container with a day-neutral variety so as to put my asphalt area to food production use. These have just started producing and, if they are happy, should be giving me gobs and gobs of berries for freezing and jams. If you look closely, you can see I have arched deer fencing over the container to ward off squirrels. So far, no damage to any of these berries! I'll take it!
They are perfect strawberries too! Sweet, large and juicy!
My yard sure is getting shaggy though. Unruly even. But full of lovely surprises, such as gourds I didn't plant, and carrots coming up everywhere because I let one go to spectacular seed. Lettuces, too.
I haven't said a word about all the herbs I've managed to dehydrate or freeze, the first batch of potatoes that are curing in the garage, the spotty harvest of garlic, the calendula and ointment, the failed batch of sauerkraut, the winter squash and watermelons that are starting to plump up, or the peaches that are not developing even though I can't find anything wrong with them.
But here are two final shots of the whole shebang, photos taken one month apart.
I love it out there. It's my playground.
This is my entry to Hive Garden Community's monthly garden challenge for August, 2024. Thank you so much for stopping by!
