Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Reaping

I've pulled all the garlic and it looks good. The heads aren't quite as large as last year's, but they're plenty big. I didn't plant quite as much this year, which turned out to be a good thing since I still have quite a bit of last year's harvest "in stock."

I've been adding cherry tomatoes, both yellow and red, to salads for the past week or so, and there will be plenty more from the two pots on the patio. The garden tomatoes aren't doing very well. The plants are small and there are only one or two fruits on each one. I may have to – gasp! – buy tomatoes at the farmer's market for canning this year.

Half a dozen onions were large enough to dig up, and there will be many, many more. Yes, onions are cheap and easy to find at the market, but they're also easy to grow and I find it very satisfying to add a homegrown onion to our daily fare. At least for a couple months, until I run out of them.

Zucchini, as you probably know, can be prolific. I bought four plants and planted six hills of seeds. I've yet to harvest a single fruit. Every tiny zucchini on the plants has, so far, turned yellow. I've been pulling them off, hoping for green ones that will actually grow and this morning I found two. So we'll see.

The seeded plants are growing well but have no flowers yet, and I have rows of cucumbers, butternuts and cushaws, each growing like the weeds which have taken over most of the garden space.

I'm really, really hungry for gazpacho – I'm pretty sure cavewomen didn't have tomatoes, but for those of us in the modern world following a paleo plan, gazpacho has to be one of the more perfect dishes. I can't bring myself to pay $2.99/pound for tomatoes, which is what Tiny Kroger is still charging for them, when I'll have ripe ones in my back yard in a couple of weeks.

I didn't mind paying $2.49/pound for spaghetti squash when I found it at Big Huge Kroger when I went shopping yesterday. It took most of a $20 bill to pay for two large ones. I stopped at another market on the way home that had them for $1.39/pound, so I added one more to my inventory. And wished I'd stopped there first!

I started feeling not-so-great at dinner last night (chicken taco salad, mmmm), and took my temperature, which was a couple degrees higher than normal. No other symptoms, but I went to bed super-early and slept for 12 hours. Something must have been going on. It's over now, and I'm ready for a walk and then work. It's raining very lightly, but I think I'll walk between the raindrops and just do it.

Wouldn't that make a great motivational poster? Heh.

4 comments:

Diandra said...

And that is what annoys me most about the so-called caveman diet. Cavemen ate tree bark, insects, grass, roots and moss. They did not have pineapples or tomatoes or whatsoever - if you went out into your garden to eat weeds all year round, THAT would be a caveman diet.

(Of course that does not mean that the plan cannot be healthy and effective - I am just angry because the "science" is so uinscientific.)

(And there is evidence of ancient cavemen actually eating goat/sheep cheese.)

Anonymous said...

Should I reap my garlic now?

The ones I planted in the ground have done well, but everything in planters and pots died. We've had so much rain all of my herbs died! Drowned!

Debbi said...

If the leaves on your garlic plants have turned brown about halfway down, then it's time to pull them up. Dig around them with a shovel, and let them dry outdoors on a screen or a rack of some sort. I have a wrought iron cart set back out of direct sun for drying.

Debbi said...

If the leaves on your garlic plants have turned brown about halfway down, then it's time to pull them up. Dig around them with a shovel, and let them dry outdoors on a screen or a rack of some sort. I have a wrought iron cart set back out of direct sun for drying.

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