The smell of cedar lingered in the garden Sunday morning after a gentle all-night rain of 3/4 of an inch. All-night gentle rains are unusual for us as usually we get rain all at once, like if you turned a swimming pool upside-down.
After fixing a few irrigation issues everything seems on track and is progressing nicely. Even the volunteer squash/pumpkin/melon plants that started from seeds that didn’t fully compost. One of these mystery plants seems to be a delicata squash. If this plant is a delicata and if we actually harvest some, it will be the first time. I have tried growing them in the past and they never really matured. I stopped growing delicata because of a couple of years of failure. The photo is the last few feet of the mystery vine in question showing the various stages of growth.
We harvested 3.5 pounds of cucumbers over the weekend, our largest single harvest in years. Most of these became half-sour pickles. A few were soaked in white wine vinegar with a some fresh garden grown red onions and a tomato. That was our first garden grown salad, a nice start to the season.
The tomatillos are growing like weeds, but weeds we want. They are now about 2.5 feet taller than the support posts, so I am not sure how I will tie them up if they keep growing. Because I am anticipating, and hoping, for a bumper tomatillo crop, I am now freezing the habanero and ghost peppers I harvest for use in salsa verde.
I think we are only a few weeks away from great garden harvests. I am also working on a few recipes to use some of what is harvested. More about those when I get the taste right and remember to take a few photos.
Smoketree Cellars 