The July Garden - SUMMER GOLD

SUMMER GOLD

What a difference a couple of weeks of rain and heat makes in the vegetable gardens.

Here's my account of what is and isn't working out so well this year...

What's working well:

• The Silver Queen corn is over 6' tall now, tasseled with small ears.
• Zucchini is outproducing our ability to eat it.
• Kale is doing well, need to pick this week.
• Cucumbers are abundant
• Wax beans are coming in by the bucket, Green bush beans are coming in as well.

What could be better:

• Pole beans have not started producing yet.
• Peas are slow in producing.
• Colorado Potato bugs are relentlessly eating the potato plants. I am going to try Eight where Sevin failed...
• We think there's to much wood ash on one of the raised beds seems to be real slow producing this year.
• Weeds this year, ugh, timing rainstorms, life, etc. got the best of us early.

About Canning... (Picture at the top of this post is the fruit of our labor)
We're back to canning again, with the economy stalled we feel it's prudent, it makes us nervous every time the power fails worrying about the freezers. One of the benefits of canning is no refrigeration is required.

We canned (using a water bath canner) our first batch of Bread and Butter pickles. They look great, IMHO. Canning always seems to take a lot longer than you think it will.

We jumped back into pressure canning again today and put up 5 jars of wax and green beans.

Rose wants to can up some Butter next week, hmm maybe some Kale too...