harvesting

It's been a while, so I thought I'd give you a garden update for August. Today, I'll share some photos of what I've been harvesting lately, and then tomorrow, I'll give you a look at how things are growing at this point in the season.

The time has definitely come in the summer for a full harvest. Yet again this year, I'm a little disappointed in the yields of many of my plants. Don't get me wrong, I'm still incredibly grateful and amazed that I'm even capable of growing one leaf of lettuce. But every year I expect to be swimming in produce, and it just doesn't quite happen that way for me. Not yet, anyways. I learned from the master gardeners at our farmers market that my brandywine tomato plants aren't getting pollinated, which explains why each plant has between one and four tomatoes on it. Not very many. My pepper plants are pretty small. I think I'm going to get a total of five bell peppers and one jalapeno, from four plants. And the super spicy asian pepper plants (Bhut Jolokia) are not even blossoming at all. Between my two eggplant plants, I think I'll get one fruit. And my chard is still pretty small. But like I said, I am grateful for what I do have. And this year is by far better than last, so I do feel the annual sense of improvement, and that's definitely something to be happy about.

So far, I've been picking a lot of beans, both green and purple string beans. Just before we left for Maine a couple weeks ago, I picked my first cucumber (and there's another one that's just about ripe, not to mention the two more on the vine growing bigger everyday!). Today I picked my third zucchini, and I have a feeling that the explosion is just around the corner. My yellow summer squash plants are still pretty small, but it looks like there's some fruits growing. I've also had one good harvest of chard. I had one "big" broccoli harvest, and have continued to pick small florets as they appear, but there's not much left. I don't think I'll plant broccoli again, unless I someday have tons of space. They take up so much room and don't produce that much, that even though we eat a lot of broccoli, my five plants were enough for about two meals.

When were leaving for our last trip, a couple of weeks ago, I went out to the garden the morning before we left to check things out as I was writing a note to Jared's brother who'd be watching the garden (and Freddie) while we were gone. It was then that I noticed the first cucumber was ready to be picked. I ended up bringing a bag on the plane filled with cut up cucumber, string beans, and some carrots from the farmer's market. When we arrived in Boston to hang out with a friend of mine for a few hours before heading to Maine, he offered us some hummus and pita chips. I said, "oh perfect, I brought some veggies from my garden!" He laughed at me, but admitted it was the best vegetable delivery he'd ever had (though maybe a little expensive, in the form of a plane ticket).

On the tomato front, I've been harvesting a lot of sun sugar cherry tomatoes (orange) and green cherries (they are seriously delicious). I've also been picking quite a few roma tomatoes. I'm not a huge fan of romas and am not even sure why I bought them. I guess they're good for sauce (although I once heard Lynn Rosetto Casper say to absolutely never use them for anything, so now I think twice about it). So I guess I should make some sauce, huh?

I've also been harvesting a lot of my medicinal plants, but I'll save that for its own post. I'm curious if any of you have been gardening this summer? How's it been going?