Everything Cucumber

 It is Cucumber season.  These are number 4, 5 and 6.  Soon I will be having them for breakfast and lunch.

I have started collecting up Pickling Cucumbers for Dill Slices.

OOPS!

That's OK.  These over grown picklers are just as good to eat as slicing Cucumbers.  There are all kinds of things to find hiding in vines,

Cantaloupe

Pumpkin

Micro Tomatoes

And the wild Blackberries are starting to ripen.

Pickle Season Has Begun

 My pickling cucumber vines have been producing very well.  It took three days of picking to gather a hydrator full of cucumbers.  There are four pounds here.  I also picked my first slicing cucumber today and there are three or four that will be ready in a day or two.   I like to pick pickling cukes quite small to get more small slices to cram into the jars.  A couple of them got away from me and got too big, but still not over ripe.

I wanted to put some onions in the jars this time.  I've never done that, but as a child one of my Mom's good friends made pickles with her grandmother every year from her own garden and my favorite part of the pickles were the little rings of pickled onions in each jar.

I just use Mrs. Wages quick process packets, but this year, since I have peppers and onions handy, I plan to experiment with pickle spices from scratch and make some sweet relish.  We do not use much relish, so two or three pints will keep us in relish all year.  But first I have to make the dill slices to store.

I made six pints to store, which is about how many we will use in a year.  There is also a seventh, lightly packed jar with some of the largest slices that I will open first to use,

Red-Spotted Purple Butterfly on Vanilla Marigolds

P.S. I just went out and picked my first handful of Seychelles pole beans for supper.  The Monte Gusto, despite being thriftier than the others, have just blossomed.  They should only be three days behind the others but they are lagging.

Simple Beauty

 Today we did hot work lifting heavy things with tractors and rocks and RR ties.  But I did take a walk through to make sure everything was OK, and this cucumber tendril struck me as being simply beautiful.

The First Cucumber

 And the First Cucumber of the year comes from the volunteer vine that is mixed in with the cantaloupes.  It is a pickling cucumber.

The slicing cucumbers are about the size of a finger.  It won't be long now.

The Black Beauty tomatoes are beginning to show some color.

Exposure to sunlight is required for them to achieve their black color.  So I pruned out a lot of the foliage on the plant to expose more fruit to sunlight.

Whenever I check on my tomatoes I always remove any of the severely disfigured or "cat-faced" fruit that I find.  These may not ripen uniformly and will be especially susceptible to rot and other problems.  With as many plants and fruit as I have this year I do not need these and I don't want the plants wasting energy on them.  Cat-facing is caused by fused blossoms and/or improper pollination.  Some varieties are more likely to produce double (or "fused") blossoms, and improper pollination can be caused by cold temperatures or severe temperature swings and we had plenty of that this year.

The pole beans have climbed as much as four feet high in some spots.

Combination pot of El Brighto Coleus and Charmed Wine Shamrocks

Volunteer Portulaca in the Dahlia bed

Hydrangea Bush

Cherry Brandy Rudbeckia

Under the apple tree, the thyme has formed a thick, perfect carpet of blooms, much to the delight of the honey bees.  This thyme can look a little dead and rough in the spring, but by this time every year it is beautiful.

Because I have several different varieties planted, I get both purple and nearly white flowers.

First Cucumber

 Last year I planted two rows of cucumbers in the bed.  This was obviously too much.  They grew like crazy, produced more cucumbers than any two people could eat. 

2022 Cucumber Jungle

So I left myself a note not to do this again.

And I didn't.  I carefully planted one row of plants right down the center.

Half as many plants as last year.

And this is what I got.

Ummm....

Yeah........

That worked out well.

Good thing there aren't twice as many plants.  Anyway, I picked the first few cucumbers this morning.  And there are plenty more on the way.

Harvest Monday - July 20, 2020

I have reached the point in the season of wondering 

"what are we going to do with all this food?"

Of course I would rather eat it all fresh, but that just isn't possible.  Some of it has to be put away.  In the mean time, both the house refrigerator and the one in the garden shed are chock full of broccoli, cauliflowers, cabbages and cucumbers.  Baskets of summer squash clutter the counter, and a basket of new potatoes is tucked into a dark nook.

I think I fulfilled my goal of growing a giant cauliflower.  I only had two white plants survive the nasty spring weather and the first of those has produced.  The second has a small head.

The Graffiti cauliflower has been the most fun.  I enjoyed taking people into my garden and saying "come look at this..."

I put the cauliflower in the steamer for 10 minutes and it held its color.

The leftover water was a deep mallard green.  When you cook purple beans you get water that is lime jell-o green.  This was a deeper color.  Of course you don't want all of your color and nutrients bleaching out, so go gently on the cooking.  It made a nice contrast with the green Vitaverde.

The orange Flame Star takes priority for raw snacks.  The white head will go into the freezer.

Now that I am past the broccoli salad rush, I am on to cole slaw.  The purple Red Acre cabbages are taking a little longer than the Golden Acre, so I am picking them smaller and getting a nice ratio of green to red in my slaw.  I am also pulling Nantes carrots, but they are not pictured because I pull them when I have the slaw half made so they will not lose their crunch.  I started with a traditional recipe, but I'm now using the Dinosaur BBQ recipe which replaces white vinegar and white sugar with cider vinegar and brown sugar.  We ate there once and I really loved their slaw.

Red Acre Cabbage, Dunja Zucchini, Cue Ball zucchini,
Golden Acre cabbage and Cucumbers

I always pick my zucchini really small because it is just me eating them.  But right now I am loving the round Cue Ball.  They are sweet and tender and should be picked when they are still the size of a cue ball.  They scratch up really easy.  I don't know how anyone would ever take these to market. The ugly factor would make them unappealing. But I've learned to be extra careful and always use a knife to cut the stem.  I am now picking both Supremo pickling cukes and Bristol slicing cukes.  I don't have enough Supremo to make a batch of pickles yet so they are going into salads for now.  

I've pulled the last of the weed potato volunteers out of the zucchini bed.

My grow-bag potatoes will be ready to harvest as new potatoes soon.

The largest of the bunches flopped in the rain.  The only problem with this is it leaves the center surface of the soil exposed to more direct light.  If I had a lot of soil or chopped leaves lying around (which I don't) I would have just dumped some in on top.  But instead I took some twine and tied a circle around them.  Then I went and tied twine around all of the others too!  If I can get to mixing some more soil (I have all of the ingredients) I will probably untie them and add a layer.  It will actually make watering them easier and they don't really look messy.  They look like a giant planter full of cascading plants.

Standing back up with one string

This is day lily season.

Here are two of my favorites

A Day of Firsts

Today I picked the first cucumber,
the first zucchini and the Baby Bump grew a mop-head.

In fact today there are a lot of corn silks showing

 I can almost taste this tomato!