We’re set for another hot day today, and I thought I’d be watering the garden this morning. It seems we got more rain during the night, though, and it wasn’t needed.
Check it out! Our very first – and so far, only – Magda squash! I picked a couple of patty pans smaller than before, more to encourage the plants to continue blooming and producing.
I picked a few oddly small corn cobs that turned out to be ripe, but just… oddly small. There are a few green Seychelle beans, a decent amount of the Royal Burgundy bush beans, but it’s the Carminat beans that really surprise me. So few plants, and they are so productive!
There are a few chocolate cherry and Forme de Couer, and in the second photo of the slide show, you’ll see that we are FINALLY having black cherry tomatoes turning colour.
There are still some sugar snap peas being produced, and that bed where I was finally able to identify a volunteer.
A bit of greenery showed up at the very end of the bed. I thought it might be a weed, but something seemed familiar about it, so I left it. Now that it is bigger and even starting to bloom, I have been able to confirm:
It is an Aunt Molly’s ground cherry.
I am quite surprised to see it. We grew those a couple of years ago, in the spot next to the compost ring, where we now have a new framed bed with Crespo squash and Seychelle beans in it. There is another raised bed between that and the bed this ground cherry showed up in.
One of the things I was testing out with the ground cherries was whether they would easily self sow, as I’d been hearing from some people who have started to view it as a weed because it’s so hard to get rid of. The next year, though, nothing showed up. For one to now show up here is a bit of a mystery. I have no idea how it could have gotten there. It’s not like we had birds eating the ground cherries and potentially pooping the seeds out. The fruit was too thoroughly engulfed in leaves for any birds to get at. No other critters seemed interested in them, either.
I’m not going to complain, though. This is a lovely surprise, and I hope it actually gets a chance to mature and produce fruit, before our season runs out!
I’m running a little short on sleep right now. Things did not turn out as planned, and I had to cancel the truck appointment for an oil change and diagnostic.
Before I get into that, though, here is this afternoon’s harvest.
I was quite pleased to have such largish harvests, two days in a row! Those are our first Forme de Coeur tomatoes in there, along with more Chocolate Cherry tomatoes. There’s a few sugar snap peas – those plants are somehow still producing! – and all three types of beans we planted this year.
I harvested in the afternoon rather than the morning, because I was busy with something else. I got the girls to water the garden for me this morning, too. The only thing I was able to do was feed the outside cats, while the girls tended to eye baby (we are out of eye drops, so I’m extra glad we have the oral antibiotics now!) before setting her outside.
The why of it needs a bit of background explanation.
You know how, when you walk into some stores, there are people who come up to you offering applications for credit cards?
I’ve said no to these for years, but one recent trip to Canadian Tire, I figured, what the heck. I’ll apply – while fully expecting to be turned down.
Much to my shock, I was approved for a Canadian Tire Mastercard.
It took about a week or more for the physical card to arrive, and then there was the process of activating it, getting things set up and so on. This meant I also got quite a few emails from Canadian Tire, with activation notifications, approval for this, set up for that, all along with the usual emails I get from them for sales and surveys and “rate your purchase” stuff. Some of these emails didn’t need to be addressed immediately and were set aside for later.
For those who don’t know, Canadian Tire has its own currency. You used to be able to get Cdn Tire money of various denominations. You could use the bills – legal tender recognized only by Canadian Tire – on your next shopping trip, or donate them to charity in bins that were set up by the exits.
Eventually, they switched to digital versions and you could collect your reward money by using a card of key fob with a bar code on it, just like other loyalty cards out there. Over time, it became the “Triangle” rewards card, which could be used at a number of different stores, and use the collected digital currency to buy things at those stores. When it comes to the Cdn Tire Mastercard, using it allows for collecting the digital money anywhere it gets used. I already had a Triangle card, but we don’t shop at Cdn Tire all that often, and don’t shop at the other stores at all, so the reward cash doesn’t accumulate quickly.
Costco takes Mastercard only.
For the amount we spend there, it would actually be practical to use the Cdn Tire card and collect the rewards cash faster. If we save up the digital money long enough, we could use it to make major purchases.
As long as I can avoid the credit card trap, of course!
Anyhow, loyalty points and rewards is part of the whole thing, and some of the emails I got were about that.
Well, yesterday evening, I had gone through some of the older emails from Cdn Tire I had set aside and followed through with them.
I blame missing what should have been obvious on the fact that it was almost midnight.
Later, while getting ready for bed and in the middle of my devotions, one of those emails popped into my head.
Something didn’t seem right.
I tried finding the deleted email on my phone but couldn’t, so I went onto my desktop to go through my email. My computer is on all night these days, playing purring sounds to sooth eye baby during the night, so it was already up and running.
I found the email.
I went through it, checked some things, but couldn’t be 100% sure there was an issue. My card information, however, was now associated with it, and I was now 99% sure it was a problem.
It was past 1am by this time, and they don’t have 24 hour customer service.
After trying a few times and realizing I wouldn’t get through to anyone until 7am local time, I used the automated system to report my card as stolen. It was the only option I had.
By the time I got back to bed to finish my devotions, it was about 3am.
I didn’t sleep much, and was wide awake by 6am.
I’d already messaged the family about what happened, to be read whenever they were able to. I also sent a text to the garage to cancel the oil change and diagnostic, since I had wanted to use the card for that.
My daughters were both up, so they took care of things I normally would have.
Meanwhile, I logged onto my account and saw that the last 4 digits they make visible on the website were different. I already had a new card number assigned.
To call in, however, the first thing the automated system asks if for the 16 digit card number, then the PIN, before going into the other options. How would that work now that the number on my card was no longer valid?
I also already got an email confirming the card was reported stolen, with a number to call if I hadn’t actually done that. If the usual number didn’t work, I could resort to that one.
Well, it turns out I didn’t need to.
Once I called and gave the 16 digit number, the process was completely different, and was immediately sent to a customer service rep.
Which was exactly what I wanted!
As soon as I heard the operator’s voice, I could tell she was bracing herself. That number would have been flagged as stolen, so right away I said, I reported my card as stolen during the night.
I then explained that my card was not physically stolen, but the number probably was, then explained about the email. The other thing I wanted to do was confirm the pending purchases I’d made yesterday as being legitimate. She spent some time helping me with all that, then forwarded me to the fraud department for the rest.
The guy I spoke to confirmed, that email was not from them. He made sure to tell me I’d done the right thing by reporting the card as stolen so quickly. With these phishing scams, they tend to rack up the charges very quickly. He was able to look up the old number and confirm that no purchases had been attempted, but if I had waited until I could talk to someone directly, he is positive there would have been fraudulent charges.
He then confirmed that the process to get a new physical card for me was started. The request would get sent to where they stamp the cards should get to that location today or tomorrow, and he figures a new card will be mailed by Friday (today is Wednesday). It takes 7-10 business days for the card to arrive in the mail – and next weekend is Labour Day weekend, so it might take about 2 calendar weeks for it to arrive.
Which is fine. The main thing I wanted to confirm is being able to pay off the card at the end of the month, since it’s possible the new card won’t arrive until well after. He checked my billing cycle, and there is no concern about anything being late. Plus, I had already set the card up as a payee with my bank. If I make a payment before the new card arrives, it will automatically be diverted to the new number. Once the card arrives, I can just edit the payee information.
All of that went much more smoothly and quickly that I feared! So quickly, I had to wait until the garage opened at 8 before I could phone.
When I got through and told him I had to cancel, I mentioned I’d sent a text during the night, and our mechanic was glad I phoned, because he hadn’t had a chance to look at any of the texts that came in during the night.
By the time I was done all that, the girls were still outside, watering the garden. My younger daughter had not been able to sleep last night at all, so once they were back inside, they both soon went to bed. As for myself, I only took the time to grab some food, get some laundry started, then went to bed myself.
Funny. I slept much better this time!
By the afternoon, we already hit our predicted high of 27C/81F. I knew there would at least be tomatoes ready to pick, so went out to do the harvest and found myself picking quite a bit more than expected. Even with the morning watering, everything in the garden was all doopy from the heat and humidity!
I did have another surprise, while picking pole beans in the main garden area.
A car stopped on the road and gave a bit of a honk. Then someone came out and started calling out “hello”.
With the lilac hedge in the way, I wasn’t sure if this was someone calling to me, or thinking there was someone at the property across the road from us. No one lives there, but the owners are there frequently.
So I made my way through the overgrown area that’s too tall to mow, to try and see what was going on.
It turned out to be my husband’s prescription delivery! It was a different driver and he was unfamiliar with the area. When he saw me in the garden, he stopped on the road to see if he was in the right place!
I wasn’t expecting the delivery for several more hours!
He then drove around and I met him at the gate. It was my husband’s insulin, so I had to make sure that got into the fridge before going back to the garden!
So… yeah. Today was not at all as planned! But things worked out in the end, and that’s the important part.
Oh, and before I forget…
I’m happy to say that my sparkly hat that the cats got all stinky, survived going through the washer and drier! It’s not meant to be washed that way. I’m sure using the lingerie bag helped.
I’m quite pleased, as it’s my favourite hate!
Since I wasn’t going out today, I did get some more done on the cat isolation shelter, but that will be for my next post!
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!
It is really wet out there, but we’re not supposed to get more rain today. I was torn between continuing on shifting the beds or starting transplanting. We have quite a few things that are more than ready to get set out.
After looking at the weather forecast, and the state of our transplants, transplanting won. In particular, tomatoes. It’s either that or pot them up, and that would be a silly thing to do at this, when they would do much better out in the garden.
The first thing I did was go through my trays and see how many I had of each type. When I saw I had 8 chocolate cherry, I decided they should go into the 8 chimney block planters at the chain link fence.
I then cut some of our many distilled water bottles to create rings for the transplants. With my husband needing distilled water for his CPAP humidifier, we have LOTS of these gallon/4L jugs. I had a few rings left over from last year, but a lot of them seem to have disappeared over the winter.
I had some of the tomato transplants in individual pots, and some in a large celled tray. There were three rows of four Chocolate Cherry, Black Cherry and Forme de Couer, and the remaining cells got San Marzano. Those ones are the strongest and healthiest San Marzano. The deep celled tray with just San Marzano ended up in the sun room too early – we needed the space – and has only a few sad tomatoes left.
The tomatoes in the tray were so big and bushy, it wasn’t until I was taking the Chocolate Cherry out (they were in the middle row, of course) that I saw one had died off. I completely forgot we’d lost one in that tray. So, we have 7 Chocolate Cherry tomatoes at the chain link fence, and an open space for something else.
Once transplanted, they each got a ring around them. This is to protect them from the wind for the first while, and from the cats that like to go under the netting. The netting was draped back over the blocks and will remain until the elm trees are done dropping their seeds. As the tomatoes grow, the chain link fence will be their trellis support.
There were 10 Forme de Coure tomatoes, so I decided they should go into the rectangular raised be in the old kitchen garden. This bed already has a soaker hose set up. There is garlic growing down the middle, though not very many. This bed got the last garlic cloves, so some of them were pretty small and did not survive the winter. The garlic will be ready to harvest before the tomatoes are fully mature, so they should be okay together.
These tomatoes got their protective rings around them, which are being held in place by pairs of bamboo stakes – the rings blow away if they’re not anchored – which will become their trellis supports as they the tomatoes grow.
Once those were in, I saw there was space enough to transplant some onions. Because I’ve got those started in repurposed mixed vegetable trays, it was quite easy to pop out onion starts in just one section and bring them over. I started with Red Wethersfield, because they were the largest, and I have the fewest in the trays. They were planted at each end of the bed and in between the tomatoes, with a few extras tucked in among the garlic. I think I got half the Red Wethersfield onions done.
There was room enough along the south side of the bed to add a row of the smaller shallots – planting a larger bulb onion might have been a bit too crowded. I didn’t try to plant some on the north side of the bed, as there wasn’t quite as much space, plus I figured they would end up getting shaded out by the tomatoes.
All that took about 3 hours or so. I decided to take a break, and will get back at it, later. The next bed I want to work on is the empty bed in the East yard, next to the peas, spinach and carrots. I will be putting the eggplant in there, and want to try something different to protect these heat loving plants. I will probably be planting the hot peppers with them.
After that, I have some space in the wattle weave bed. I think I’ll put the luffa next to the double lilac again; they did well there last year. Peppers did well there, too, but I might put the Black Cherry tomatoes there, instead. Some of the peppers can go into the high raised bed. The first of the trellis beds, however, is being saved for the melons, and I think the winter squash will be going into the two beds we are shifting, with our without their walls in place. The Crespo squash in particular really needs to be transplanted, but it needs a LOT of space. I might just make a whole new squash hill, just for them. Then there are the mulberry, which are way overdue for transplanting.
Much to do, that’s for sure! Tomorrow is going to be a write off for me, as I’m getting my field of vision test done, which includes pupil dilation. My vision is going to be messed up for quite a while, so I want to get back out there and get as much done today as possible.
Shuffling the trays around has certainly helped! Check this out.
When I turned the lights on yesterday morning, there was nothing in the tray. When I turned them off in the evening, all the cells on the far right of the photo had seedlings breaking ground. By morning, they were opening their seed leaves, and I could even see one starting to break the surface in the middle row, though it’s not visible in the photo.
That row of seedlings on the right are the Black Cherry, which are new seeds for this year. The middle row are the Chocolate cherry, which are seeds from previous years. The ones on the left, which we got this year as a freebie with our order, are a completely different type of tomato, so I expect those to take longer to germinate, compared to the cherries.
I will wait until there’s more sprouts before I raise the tray off the heat mat. I’ll just put one of the dome lids under it, which will raise the tray about 5 or 6 inches off the mat and closer to the light. I don’t want to unplug the mat until the peppers start germinating, which will take longer.
The tray with the San Marzano seeds has been a bit of a surprise. There weren’t many seeds in the packet, but it turns out that there were more than I thought. There are seedlings in all the cells in the tray, but in the row where I had enough to plant only one seed per cell, there’s extra, and in some of the cells where two seeds had been planted, there are three seedlings! These would have been seeds that had stuck together in the package. Some are so close together, I’ll just cut away one, rather than thin by transplanting, as removing one would damage the other.
Well, we decided to start bringing things in. Tonight and tomorrow night, we are supposed to reach lows of 1C/34F
While our one eggplant that is producing is small enough to give protective cover, that’s pretty much it. The rest is just too much or too large to be able to cover adequately.
The shelling beans were simply ready to be harvested, so I worked on those first.
These are the blue grey speckled tepary beans, and the are so tiny! I haven’t tried to open any pods yet. It was almost but not quite raining as I picked these, so once I got them inside, they went onto a screen and are laid out to dry thoroughly indoors before I start shelling them.
Then it was time to pull the Tropeana Lunga onions.
They are SO much easier to harvest from the high raised bed, than the onions in the low raised beds. I had to dig most of those out, because the soil is so compacted. Not here! These came out easily.
Check out that chard. Not a single leaf to harvest!
I had this wire mesh door on the picnic table under the canopy tent, where I was able to cure onions before, but with the cold temperatures, I set it up in the sun room. It is supported by a couple of saw horses over the swing bench, giving the kittens plenty of space to go underneath and have their warm and cozy naps!
These onions are a very thick onion, in the stem and the greens. They are very much like the Red of Florence onions we already harvested, but with even sturdier stems.
Next, I worked on the red tomatoes. A few of the ripe ones had been partially eaten, while others had holes like this.
Some of the holes were even still occupied!
Slugs are remarkably voracious!
This is all the red tomatoes. In the bin are the Cup of Moldova, and on the side are the Sophie’s Choice. There were very few Sophie’s choice, overall.
While I was working on these, I got a surprise visitor.
Rolando Moon showed up! I haven’t seen her in weeks! She let me pet her a bit, but mostly hung around and hissed and growled at the kittens. Except for when she suddenly showed up with a big mouse in her mouth. One of the kittens became VERY interested in her at that point. Rolando Moon can be aggressive, so I did step in, which allowed the kitten to make a jump for the tiny bit of mouse that was left. He promptly inhaled it and was sniffing for more, but with Rolando being the way she is, I carried him off.
Do you know that it’s really hard to harvest tomatoes while there is a kitten perched on your shoulders, and it refuses to leave? 😄
Next, I worked on the Chocolate Cherry and the Yellow Pear tomatoes.
There were SO many yellow pear tomatoes!
I also harvested the dry King Tut Purple Pea pods, though they were green instead of purple. I’m not sure why I’m keeping the seeds, to be honest. The last Red Kuri squash was also harvested, and now sit with the onions to cure.
I have left it to the girls to work out what to do with all the tomatoes, except for the ones that I will be keeping to save seeds from. The Chocolate Cherry, for sure. I’m told those were the tastiest. Not the yellow pear, though. I’m glad we tried them, but they weren’t enjoyed enough to bother saving seeds from. Both the Cup of Moldova and Sophie’s Choice are rare varieties, so I will be keeping seeds just to help keep them going. We will decide later if we want to stick with them next year, of we want to try other varieties as well. My daughter described both of them as good, but very mild in flavour. I think she and my husband would prefer something more intensely flavoured. We’ll see.
This bed that had the paste tomatoes is now completely empty. That means I can prep it to plant the best of the hardneck garlic I’d saved from this year’s harvest. We will need to get more, though.
This bed had the yellow pear tomatoes. There are still the red onions from sets in there, but I don’t think we’ll get anything out of them. Once those are out, this bed, and the one to the right of it, can be prepped for next year.
The kulli corn in the bed to the left still has no cobs forming, at all.
This is where the chocolate cherry were. It’s the second year we grew tomatoes here, so we will do something else here next year. I’m thinking peas.
There are still carrots in this bed. I don’t know that there are any shallots or onions left. There are two shallots that went to seed, but the seed heads seems to have stalled in development. It seems the same with the lettuce I left to go to seed. I think it’s just been too chilly for them to progress properly.
That’s it for now. Later on, I’ll head out again and look over the pumpkins, and see about harvesting the biggest ones. Pumpkins can continue to ripen after picking, if we can keep them warm, dry and in sunlight. That is a difficult combination to achieve in our household, though!
I also want to put bottles with warm water in them around the eggplant that’s fruiting, and then cover it. I may as well harvest what summer squash there is, too. We won’t be able to protect them from the cold, so chances are, they will get killed off tonight. I might be able to cover the apple gourds. They are the only ones that are immature enough to make the effort. After these 2 expected cold nights, the overnight lows are expected to be much warmer, so if they can survive those two nights, they still have a chance.
There are only two people in our household that enjoy eating fresh tomatoes, but even they are getting tomatoed out when it comes to the Yellow Pear tomatoes! They were starting to accumulate, so I decided to make a small batch of tomato sauce.
Along with the Yellow Pear tomatoes, there were about five or six Chocolate Cherry tomatoes, and two Cup of Moldova tomatoes on hand, so they wall went into the pot together!
Being so small, they got mushy very quickly, so it wasn’t long before I was running them through the finer colander we have. Some of the seeds still get through, but no one seems to mind that. If I were making a tomato paste, though, I’d run it through a sieve as well, to get rid of the seeds.
After straining the tomatoes, I fried up some finely chopped onions and garlic in some olive oil until soft, then added the strained tomatoes back to the pot. For seasoning, I added salt and pepper, a bit of sugar, and a bay leaf, then cooked it down until slightly thicker.
It wasn’t quite enough sauce to fill a 750ml jar.
What a colour!
Not too long ago, I found some large mouth screw on jar lids – usually I can just find regular mouth. Since this is going into the fridge, I much prefer to use the screw on lid, rather than the canning lids and rings. I’ll have to pick up more of these when I find them again. Most of the canning jars we have are wide mouth jars.
Not being a fan of tomatoes in general, I didn’t actually taste this to see how it turned out. I’ll have to get my husband or daughter to do a taste test and let me know what they think!
I checked my weather app last night, and read that we were to get rain and thunderstorms this morning.
This morning, I checked the app and it told me “rain will end in 45 minutes”.
There was no rain.
We’re going to have to water the garden today.
Which is not a complaint. We have a garden to water, still! Though the evenings have been chillier than forecast, we’re still frost free.
While checking all the garden beds, I spotted some deer damage in the sweet corn.
The silks were nibbled off!
It looks like a deer ducked under the rope fence (so much for the bells and whirligigs to startle them!), walked along one side of the corn, nibbling the silks all along the way.
I did find one cob that had been pulled off and left on the ground.
I’d been able to check the other nibbled ones, but with this one I could peel it entirely. They are still not ripe. I think the cool evenings are slowing things down.
We’re supposed to have highs between 17C/63F (today) and 14C/57F (in a couple days) over the next while, before temperatures rise above 20C/68F again. We’re supposed to stay above 20C for several days before dropping to the mid teens again. One of my apps has a 28 day long range forecast, and according to that, we won’t hit overnight temperatures low enough for a frost risk until almost a week into October.
Every mild day is bonus right now, and allowing our garden to continue to produce.
I love those G Star patty pans!
The onions are from the curing table for today’s cooking, but the rest is fresh picked. The Yellow Pear are filled with ripening tomatoes – much more than the Chocolate cherry. We have to figure out what to do with them all.
A couple of Sophie’s Choice tomatoes were ripe enough to pick. I will use those to save seeds. The paste tomatoes went into the freezer for later processing.
As I write this, my older daughter is in the kitchen, trying to use up a whole lot of vegetables for lunch, to go with the short ribs that were in the slow cooker all night. I look forward to seeing what she comes up with! 😊
This morning, I headed out to start mowing the lawn before things got too hot.
I was too late.
I suppose 22C/72F isn’t too bad to start, but by the time I was done for the day, just a couple of hours later, we were already at 29C/84F. Depending on where we look, our high of the day is expected to be anywhere from 29C/84F to 32C/90F.
Just to make it even more interesting, the humidity is quite high. It’s just past 1pm as I write this, and the grass is still wet with dew! I managed to get the south and east yards done, but the north and west yards, the garden area, and the outer yard, will all have to wait. Tomorrow is supposed to be cooler.
The good thing about not being able to mow for so long is, there is lots of grass clippings. I’m not using the grass catcher, because I’d be stopping to empty it way too often. Plus, with how damp the grass was, it has a chance to dry a bit before I get the girls to rake it up for me this evening, and I can use it to continue mulching the squash and corn bed, tomorrow.
While I was mowing, I was going past the chocolate cherry and yellow pear tomato beds and could see there were some that could be picked. Once the mowing was done for the day, I went tomato picking.
Our very first Chocolate Cherry tomatoes! There are not going to be a lot of them, altogether; the plants have not been very productive. I don’t know if that’s because of the variety, or because of the growing conditions. These were grown just for fresh eating, though, so that’s okay.
I look forward to my daughters trying them, and letting me know how they like them.
Thanks to my daughters taking care of feeding the yard cats for me, I got to sleep in a bit, after a late night of getting the hard crab apple cider started. I’ve been pretty good about getting to bed at around midnight of late, so I’m not as used to being up past 2am anymore. 😄
I am really enjoying checking the garden while doing my morning rounds. The Red Kuri squash are ripening nicely, and the chocolate cherry tomatoes are slowing turning colour.
I’m a bit surprised these are taking so much longer, considering they get more sunlight than the Yellow Pear tomatoes, which we’ve been able to harvest for a little while now. My older daughter, for whom I bought this variety for, is really looking forward to trying them.
I remembered to get a picture of the newly supported kulli corn and Yellow Pear tomatoes. You can see some of the corn is still leaning way over. Those stalks are from the middle of the bed, and I wasn’t able to do much to add support in there. The tomatoes had all been leaning into the pathway, too, but I managed to straighten them up and add more support to their tops, and now the pathway can be walked in again!
I just love the look of these Ozark Nest Egg gourds! They are doing so well. I was even able to hand pollinate a couple more this morning.
While seeing what else could be pollinated, I was happy to see the G-Star squash I’d hand pollinated seems to have taken. I was able to hand pollinate another Boston Marrow and a couple Lady Godiva hulless pumpkins, too.
I was able to collect a far larger harvest this morning than I expected. The larger colander I use for harvesting was not available. Usually, that’s not an issue, as the smaller one is quite enough – but I didn’t expect to be picking more tomatoes this morning! I ended up having to use my pockets, too. 😄
There were more pole beans to pick than last time – and from the looks of some of them, a few got missed before! I was happy to pick more Magda squash, and to have one green zucchini ready to pick.
The tomatoes are all Cup of Moldova, and they went into the freezer with the rest. We still had some Sophie’s Choice that I picked yesterday, and they are now sliced and dehydrating in the oven.
Today is the last business day of the month: payday. Normally, I’d be in the city right now, doing more of our monthly stock up shopping. We are still good from the trip I did on the weekend, and we need to process the tomatoes in the freezer to free up space, so the trip can wait a bit longer.
I think, however, I might still make a jaunt into town. My husband’s birthday is coming up, and he wants a pizza night for his birthday. 😊
The Re-Farmer 