Late Summer Report

Howdy y’all.  My sister and her oldest daughter were in town the past 5 days, so not much gardening was done, which was a good thing.

The remaining potato plants died off last week and I pulled 7 more potatoes out of the bag.  We boiled them, ate some right away, then put the rest on a potato/asparagus/goat cheese pizza that we like to make from time to time.  For my first foray into potato growing, I can’t complain.  I can reuse the bags next year and cross my fingers the blight will miss my yard.

Beans!  Both bush and pole varieties, we’ve been picking ’em and eating ’em by the pound.  They are quickly supplanting tomatoes as my garden’s pride and joy.  The easiest to grow and the best producing plants I’ve encountered.    Speaking of tomatoes, it’s been hot the past 5 days with another hot 5 to come, so the toms are finally thriving.  They’re not anywhere near where I was at this point last year, but there are blossoms and not too many of them have subsequently dropped.  With any luck, we might be eating our first tomato the first week of September.  I should note that other Maine gardeners have already done this earlier in the month, but as mentioned in previous posts, it’s been a bad year for toms on the whole.

Mr. E surprised us the other day by empowering himself to pick my one big pepper (shown below).  It was a little bigger than a golf ball.  What do you say when your 4 year old picks something you’ve watched and nurtured for 3 months that wasn’t ready to be plucked yet?  You say “awww, thanks buddy.  Let’s not pick any more peppers, though. We want to wait until they get REALLY big, like this (make big bell pepper shape with hands) before we pick any more.”  I have 6 or 7 more fruits on the plants, but they’ve got a long way to go.  Sigh.

Lettuce has seriously bolted and is now about 4′ high, but I kind of like seeing them in beds, so I haven’t pulled them yet.  Still getting a few peas here and there.  Broccoli recovered, but quickly flowered and went to seed.  The wife and I plucked a few heads and they tasted fine to us, so we might eat it anyway.  Squash is producing many flowers, but no fruits yet.  Same with the melons, cukes and eggplant.  4 ears of corn showing, just waiting for them to get big enough to pick.  Carrots and my one beet plant doing well and I’ll probably start pulling those out in a week or so.