I haven’t updated you all on the garden in some time, mainly because I haven’t been at home much in the last two months due to births, funerals, our vacation, and my grandmother’s illness. Sorry that there are not photos of the actual garden this time. It has been rainy here, and I didn’t think I could get any good photos. I hope to have my sweet hubby (the photographer in the family) to shoot some soon.
Last night when we arrived home, we went to the garden to see how it was doing. It was amazing how being out in the garden even for just a few minutes last night helped to calm my spirit. On a whim, I used the pitchfork to pull a couple of plants of red potatoes with which to make some soup today. I looked down at my hands covered in fresh smelling soil and breathed deeply. Aaah, relaxation!
Today, I went out to the garden again. It began to rain a slow warm rain of summer—cleansing, soft, fresh, lovely.
After an hour in the rain I returned to the house with 5 gallons of ripe tomatoes to can tonight. Because of the rain and my mistake of planting the romas a little too closely together, they have a powdery mildew on the plants. If I had caught it earlier, I don’t think it would have been a problem, but at this point it almost resembles fusarium wilt. It does not have any of the defining features of the wilt, but all the same, it is causing the plants to start to die back. My plan is to pull more of the red/orange tomatoes in the next couple of days and put them up. Then I’ll pull all of the green tomatoes to make relishes and salsa verde. I’ll remove the plants (being sure to not place the plants in the compost pile). I’ll then prepare the bed for my fall plantings.
I found a HUGE zucchini that was missed. It is too large to use even for baking, and so I’ll save the seeds from it for next year’s garden. I yanked our first zucchini plant, as it had completed its cycle of fruits and was starting to I pulled some more of the shelling beans (Jacob’s cattle) that the rabbits did not demolish. I will most likely pull all of the bell peppers at once this weekend so that I can make some more pepper jelly.
I picked some red okra (see photo below). I love growing heirloom red okra for a number of reasons. The blossom is lovely. It is related to the hibiscus, and the red okra blossom is a creamy yellow with a deep maroon throat. Just beautiful! Red okra is more forgiving than green okra. See how large the 2 are in the photo? If this were another variety of green okra, those would be too tough to use. When okra gets older, no matter how long you cook it, it will not soften. Red okra allows you to have a few extra days of leeway before it starts to toughen. Red okra turns a darker green when cooked and can be used in all of the same ways as green okra. It also doesn’t have as many of the spines on the plant as some green varieties might. The only cons I can see is that it fruits a little later in the season than green okra.
With all of the rain that our area has had this year, I’ve seen a lot more garden pests than I have noticed in any previous year. I cannot blame the rain completely, though. I have not been home enough to be vigilant about treating the pests and preventing problems. My husband and I killed the first Japanese beetles that I have ever seen in our yard. I can only hope that we will not see an infestation of those voracious creatures! As I pulled the zucchini I was dismayed to find cucumber beetles near the soil. With so many relatives of the cucumber in our gardens (cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins/butternut squash, and melons), I pray that I can keep them from spreading elsewhere. When I pulled the potatoes last night, I found them to have potato scab. I’m guessing that among the three main causes of the scab—soil not acidic enough, improper crop rotation, and soil being too wet at time of germination—that the later one is the most relevant. These were the last of the potatoes I planted and were near where I planted potatoes last year. Perhaps some of the soil from last year’s planting was mixed into the part of the bed that this year’s crops were in, but I do not know. Luckily the potatoes are still edible, but they cannot be used for seed potatoes for next year. We’ll hope that the scab will not be found in the potato boxes where the rest of this year’s crop are being grown.
What is good about all of the problems and mistakes from this year? I have learned a ton from them. Gardening mistakes are in many ways little gems on the road to success. I try not to be frustrated with them because they serve me in my ongoing education so well. Besides, we have more than made our money back on what we paid for plant materials and seeds this year. How could we complain about that?
Hope to have more photos and updates soon. Until then, happy gardening!
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The annual Grainger County Tomato Festival starts this week in Rutledge, TN. Go 
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