Today's Harvest

Today, we harvested a few tomatoes, various types of peppers, a few pods of okra, a couple of carrots (What's the best thing to do with carrots? Do we go on and pick them all now, and hope they'll save for quite awhile, or do we leave them in the ground and harvest as we need them? I really need to look up this and a number of other things), A LOT of green beans (three types, but mainly one we call "Maude Wall" beans, after the woman who gave my parents the seed some thirty or so years ago; this bean is consistently the best, most reliable, and most prolific of any bean we've tried growing. Mrs. Wall didn't know the kind of bean at the time, but said she'd had it for many years.)

Oh, yes, we also brought in some basil to start drying some for our winter supply. Of course, it won't be as good as fresh, but at least we won't have to buy dried basil from the store. We have one plant of a purple variety and four or five plants of a green variety.

We have plenty of cilantro for now, but we have been led to understand that it will quickly go to seed as we have more hot days.

For medicinal purposes, we are growing feverfew, which can be helpful for migraines. I should probably start drying some of that, too, but haven't yet.

It is dry here, again, though not as bad as the last couple of years at this point. We do have a chance of rain in the next couple of days, but not a high chance. The previous two years have been very hard on the area, especially on the nursery businesses. Their crop is an investment in years, not months, like most garden/crop farms, so a big loss in one year can be quite devastating. If you think to, please say a prayer for the nurserymen in the area.

Neat thing about harvesting okra (didn't know there was anything neat about it?): 5yo considers it his special privilege to do it! How awesome is that!?!

Mary Susan