Today, we were expected to reach a high of 28C/82F, so I wanted to make sure to give the garden a deep watering early in the morning, before things got hot. I’m glad we did, because we seem to have reached 30C/86F, with the humidex closer to 35C/95F!
I’m so glad I remembered to grab ice packs before I headed out today.
Anyhow…
After the garden was watered, I did some harvesting, and this is what I gathered.
There was a single patty pan ready to harvest. I mightily resisted picking the one Magda squash we have right now, but I decided to let it get bigger. There’s one zucchini that looks like it’s going to reach a harvestable size soon, too.
There was a nice handful of the Royal Burgundy bush beans (bottom right corner in the bin, as well as the longer Carminat pole beans. There was a single San Marzano tomato to pick, plus a whole two Chocolate Cherry tomatoes – the first of the season! I went ahead and harvested a few more Uzbek golden carrots as well. I think the next harvest will be the last of them, except for the ones gone to seed.
I always second guess myself when it comes to harvesting corn. I’ve heard it said, you can tell they’re ready when the silks are dried up, but I’ve harvested them at that stage and found immature cobs. It’s also suggested to tear through the husks to actually see the kernels, but if the cob isn’t ready, that leaves it with an opening where moisture and insects can get in.
This morning, I found one corn stalk broken at the cob, as if something tried to pull it down. Raccoons are notorious for cleaning out an entire corn patch at peak ripeness, but I don’t think a raccoon did this. I would expect more damage from a raccoon. Still, since the cob was above the broken stem, I shucked it and it was perfectly ripe.
Yes, I ate it raw, and it was deliscious.
So I went ahead and picked more that I thought might also be ripe. Happily, when I shucked them at the compost pile, I found they were all ripe. I ended up putting them in the oven to roast along with something else, and they were absolutely fantastic!
Yukon Chief is definitely a variety worth growing again!
I have a different short season variety to try next year, so we’ll be able to compare, but with how super short the Yukon Chief’s growing season is, it already has an extra point going for it. Once we decide on a variety we like that grows well here, we will start saving seeds. By then, we should have more space to dedicate to growing corn, too.
It’s nice to finally be having some decent sized harvests this year! I honestly did not thing we would be getting any bush beans at all, so to have both bush and pole beans to harvest is just icing on the cake!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 
A bountiful harvest thrives in structured landscapes, and retaining walls help manage slopes and soil. How do you integrate these walls into gardens effectively?
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I just found your comment in my spam folder! Sorry this took so long.
Basically, I just use what I have, where I can.
With the retaining wall, I happened to have a whole lot of chimney blocks that were supposed to replace the chimney to the wood furnace, but never got done. We no longer use the wood furnace (for insurance reason), so when the roof was redone, the old chimney was removed. That left me with a whole lot of blocks available to use!
The land slopes away from the house, which is a good thing for the house, but not for a garden. There has been a small garden by the old kitchen for as long as I can remember. After we cleaned it up, I used some of the blocks along what used to be a fence line, then built up a low raised bed against it. As water flows away from the house, it flows through other beds, towards the retaining wall.
We also have a sump pump hose that drains into there, and this past year I set it up to drain against and under the high end of one of the raised beds we built, essentially watering it from below. I think that had a lot to do with why the tomatoes we grew there last summer were so lush!
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