Seems the summer has flown by, hasn’t it? *sigh* We say that every year.
We are now starting into harvest season! At least for a lot of our early vegetables. I’ve been harvesting herbs for weeks now, but this week we actually picked our first vegetables from the garden – some fat green beans. Enough for our dinner, 3/4 lb.
In the rest of the garden, we’ve seen lots of progress too.
We finally figured out how the corn grows. We’ve got some litle ears coming in now.
And the cucumbers have finally shown up to the party.
Our tomatoes are really coming along. We’re just waiting for some to ripen.
Look at this heirloom monster!
Our tomatillos have multiplied like crazy! We’re still waiting patiently for them as well. Shouldn’t be too much longer now. From what I know of tomatillos, once their outer skin turns papery, they’re ripe. This is the first one we’ve seen start to turn. We kind of get the feeling that once they start ripening, we’re going to be inundated with tomatillos. Salsa for everyone!
Now, about the pumpkin. It has been growing so much! It’s really phenomenal the amount it’s gotten bigger in the past three weeks. Sadly though, there’s some bad news to report.
Something got to eat it before we could. We are absolutely devastated about it, since this is the first year since we’ve had gardens that we’ve been able to grow a pumpkin. We drive by huge pumpkin patches here and we were absolutely in awe at the number and size of the pumpkins in farmers’ fields here in the fall.
This year we were determined to be successful. We read that a pumpkin’s male flower comes out first. It’s huge. This attracts bees in droves for regular visits. This helps establish future pollination of the female flower, which is attached to the fruit of the pumpkin.
Since we don’t have a large patch of pumpkins, my husband actually took the time to watch to see when any female flowers were open for business, so to speak. When he saw one, he played matchmaker. When it was just dusk, he turned on some soft music and proceeded to rub the male pumpkin flower on the female pumpkin flower, ensuring pollination. Sneaky, isn’t he?
OK, so maybe it was just before dusk, without music.
This got us our lone pumpkin this year, ultimately lost to a furry critter.
Now my husband waits, day and night, for the next female flower to be ready to pollinate.
Keep your fingers crossed that we’ll be able to get another pumpkin on the go, and soon.
