Blessings Darlings!
Today ... like most days this week ... the forecast has been 'today will be much cooler than yesterday was'. Today ... like EVERY day this week ... the forecast LIED. It's still hot and miserable out.
My plan in the garden this year was to try to match most of what the garden produced with the amount of veggies that we eat fresh, other than my experiments with growing potatoes and dry beans. I'm doing okay at that goal! Yay! Not all of the success has been because I planned well, tho'.
We haven't gotten ANY tomatoes from the plants I purposely put in yet. We're eating the ones off one of the volunteer tomato plants. I have no idea what its genetics are, but it's putting out about 8 oz round fruit. Hell, one of the plants I bought and planted (pink brandywine) hasn't even set fruit yet!
I've only planted two plots of green beans this year - we had WAY too many green beans for eating last year, and I didn't want to mess with canning them this year. I only planted the second plot late, two weeks ago, so we've not gotten any from that plot. But since I wasn't after beans-for-canning, I planted my favorite bush beans this year - Contender beans. Last year I planted my second favorite, Tendergreen beans. Both produce for a longer period of time than green bean varieties for selling or canning, such as Jade. Now every few days, altho' I expect that patch to be played out, I still harvest at least a pound of beans. ALMOST too much for us. The second plot has half the number of plants in it (and can be protected from frost, since I did plant them a little late.)
When we get a cool day, I'll harvest the potatoes, and evaluate that harvest. I put in 15 seed potatoes of Yukon Gold. I'd rather have put in some russet potatoes, but this was the only option at the store at the time. Things got SERIOUSLY sold out due to folks suddenly gardening due to Coronavirus this year! I didn't to a great job of making sure that the potatolings were covered by straw to protect them from the sun over the season, so I'm sure that I'm going to have a problem with some of them being too green to eat (the green produces toxins), but it's still going to be interesting.
I lost the one grey squash zucchini to bacterial wilt, but got 3 squash off of it before it died. The ONE yellow crookneck heritage squash has been producing more than we've been able to eat. This is with using it for stir-fries, raw slices for dips, zoodles in place of pasta, and just cooking and eating it as a 'regular' veggie. The plant is now dying off, slowly but very surely, so we won't be getting much more from it. My husband is grateful for that.
Turnip and beets were about perfect. Put in 12 or 15 of each of them. Rutabagas ... I don't do well with those. They didn't survive transplanting. The 'volunteer' dill - I had one scrawny plant last year, so I just let it go to seed, and it gave me 1 plant this year - is doing well, but I'm letting it seed itself again. If I get enough plants next year, and put in some Jade or other canning beans, I'll use some for dilly beans. And maybe for dill pickles - this year I've not gotten any cucs yet but do hope I'll get a few from my late planting. I've gotten enough basil for fresh use (barely) and to dry some for the winter, but not enough for the Spawn to make and freeze pesto. Parsley has stayed alive, but not grown enough to harvest and use. I've harvested lots of spearmint, oregano, thyme, and sage. Rosemary is ... limping. I'll be happy if it survives the winter.
The one bell pepper is doing okay, but not great. The hot peppers are producing tons of peppers - I might skip growing them next year, and just smoke or dry these. Next year I want more sweet peppers and maybe some shishitos, I really loved those last year.
