It's almost the end of June and the garden chores are getting interesting. The giant zucchini plant disappeared, but not willingly so. It took a chunk of me with it. The corn fell down. I'm still hoping and praying for the remaining 8 stalks to mature though it is doubtful.I did clean up the stalks that were broken. I found a little surprise there.
It may not be much, but apparently one of the stalks hadn't broken all the way through and one of the ears had matured before the others did. I don't know how it did that as the other ears are still not mature, but I'm not complaining. At least I got one ear! Interestingly enough my cucumber plant had sent out a side vine and low and behold a GIANT cuke had set up residence in the corn stalks. A freebie. A little on the hollow side, but it was still perfectly edible in my book. Sucker weighed in at almost a pound by itself! (OK 9 ounces, but I was still impressed) It was larger than my 9" ear of corn after all.
If you've been around the blog at all you know I did a little taste testing earlier in the week. My fig tree granted me 4 more of these little beauties for a total of 5 figs this week. YUM. I think I need more fig trees. They were delicious!
The first batch of limas are in. Tropical storm Andrea stole a good half or more of the first crop of them. The only good news about that is that MAYBE some of those limas are now growing instead of just rotting because of all the rain. There was just enough here for a good side dish. Love me some limas. The holsteins were finished drying, too. But, they aren't as pretty dried so I took a picture of the few that were picked last and still good shellies. These were finished with my limas for eating instead of saved for seed. They taste like a cross between black eyed peas and... well... I guess black beans. Me like.
Enter the seed for my Fall crop of beans. Daphne sent me the original beans, My first pole beans ever. Thanks Daphne. Unfortunately due to our rains and the garsh darned squirrels the tag is no where to be found so we'll call them Daphne's beans. Nice and beany flavored. Cooks up great. Get a string as it matures, but worth the effort for flavor. The beans are rather huge and it may be worth growing for the beans themselves if I didn't like the green beans so much!
So while the garden is slow to produce now it is giving me my seeds for next year. The long term summer crops are doing their thing and all I'm doing is trying like mad to keep up with maintenance. Oh, and since I like to keep records here I had a complete crop failure due to the rains and it looks like that was my dragons tongue beans (bush) :-( Shame. There are just not many green beans you can get this time of year here. Hoping the yard longs give me something soon or I'll be eating the cowpeas as green beans instead!
See you soon!
Barbie~
