Ok back to normal. I forgot to take my camera out to the garden this evening so I don't have any pictures of the plants. But I do have a picture of yesterday's harvest which was a bit more exciting than previous harvests...
...because I picked that eggplant! Now I don't know anything about eggplant so I have no clue if it is ripe or not. But I read a lot about eggplant online and it seems like it's one of those vegetables that can't be picked too early but it CAN be picked too late. So since it was a pretty good size I went ahead and picked it. I actually cooked it up tonight so watch for an eggplant recipe to be posted soon on here.
I also picked one okra and a whole mess of basil along with the usual green beans and zucchini. I plan to make a boatload of homemade pesto and pack my freezer with it. I can't think of anything better than a freezer full of homemade pesto. I LOVE it. I am going to go ahead and cut my basil plants all the way down so hopefully they have enough time to grow back before the first frost. That way I can harvest them again for MORE PESTO.
Everything else in the garden is looking pretty good. There are many green tomatoes on all the plants. There are 5-6 watermelons that are a good size. Each pepper plant has at least 5 peppers on it. There are four of them so that means there are at least 20 peppers! There are several more eggplants growing. The strawberries have started growing again and I've picked 3 or 4 berries in the past few days.
What else is there? Oh yes the broccoli looks pretty strong. I wasn't sure if it was going to make it but it looks good now and I'm more optimistic that we will actually get some broccoli off a couple of the plants. The okra has started producing and each plant has 1-2 okras on it. The bush beans are still producing however there are quite a few beetles on them and a lot of the beans have little bug bites taken out (I just cut that part off!).
The sunflowers are at least 10 feet tall now.
And now for the bad news. The zucchinis are on their way out. Honestly I am not that sad about it considering we have picked 51 zucchinis so far this year. They are infested with squash vine borers and squash bugs (I also read about this online - I googled "my zucchini plant is wilting").
The support for the pole beans has collapsed. So the pole beans are just laying over on the ground. To tell you the truth these plants have become a huge pain in the you-know-what. They looked neat at first winding up the supports. But then they just kept growing and growing and growing and growing. And the mass of vines got more and more tangled and I couldn't even find where any beans were growing. The few beans that I have found have been tiny little things compared to the bush beans. I don't think we will be planting pole beans next year. The bush beans have been such great producers that I think we will just plant more of them instead.
I'm tempted to just dig up the whole lot of pole beans so I can plant something else in that space. There are several fall crops that could be planted - spinach, swiss chard, winter squash, lettuce, maybe some peas. I would love to try something new and the pole beans aren't really doing anything anyway. What a disappointment they were. Oh well - live and learn!
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