Our great weather this summer yielded a beautiful crop of about 20 lbs of Thompson Seedless grapes, from which I produced 3 lbs of raisins.
Tomato Palette
Growing 100+ varieties of heirloom tomatoes creates such an amazing color palette!
Potato salad in a Basque style
The harvest of the first new potatoes of the season has inspired me to make potato salad. I chose a flavor profile dominated by homemade paprika, which I made last year by pulverizing dried home-grown Basque Piquillo Lodosa peppers. My pepper seeds came from the famous town of Guernica.
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No blight in sight
Last year on this date my tomato plants were already showing signs of late blight. So….this year I invested in a sprayer and an organic copper sulfate preparation to battle the blight fungus. But wouldn’t you know, here is today’s forecast of late blight danger in our area. Green = no danger. Yellow or Red would signal danger. Blight likes cool humid weather, but we have had hot dry weather.
Nectar War
Here is a photo of a Pale Swallowtail.
OK, not really. Pale Swallowtails are quite rare here, so when I saw one feeding on these flowers I raced for my camera. Just as I focused this Anna’a Hummingbird showed up and aggressively drove the swallowtail away.
Early Returns
Of the 124 varieties of tomatoes I am growing, these 4 were the first to ripen fruit.
But doubtless God never did
Isaak Walton, in his book Compleat Angler, published in 1653, quoted Dr. Boteler as saying about strawberries “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did”.
This is summer!
Magically on the first day of summer, the first raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries in my garden all have ripened. I love this time of year!
Early Tomatoes!
[su_dropcap size=”2″]T[/su_dropcap]hanks to our exceptionally warm Spring, my tomato plants are three weeks ahead of where they were last year. The following varieties already have (green) fruit –
- Alicante
- Ananas Noir
- Bloody Butcher
- Buckbee’s New 50 day
- Burraker’s Favorite
- Carmello
- Napoli
- Coyote
- Earl of Edgecomb
- Eva Purple Ball
- Flamme
- Fred Limbaugh
- Indische Fleische
- Kellogs
- Kimberly
- Koralik
- Lahman’s Pink
- Marianne’s Peace
- New Hampshire
- Old Brooks
- Purple Russian
- Quedlinberger
- Riviera
- Sasha Altai
- Sunset Red Horizon
- Tondino
- Tommy Toe
Hay there
Most years we don’t have enough dry weather to make hay until July, by which time the grass is so mature and woody that the hay it makes isn’t palatable to horses. But this year early June has been dry, so we harvested this beautiful hay. Toby the cat approves.