Friday, July 15, 2011

In other picture news (check out my cankles below)

For some reason, my garden has taken off in the last few weeks. The tomatoes have been very sluggish to ripen, some of them rotting on the vine before they're ready to eat. I've read in many different forums that this is happening to a lot of people due to the heat/humidity this year. Today, it is 70 degrees and overcast. I can practically hear the garden growing. I went out to harvest and was amazed at the abundance. It certainly wasn't like that a couple of weeks ago. My green peppers, which were completely worthless last year (produced 1 pepper) have exploded, and now the three plants are dripping with peppers - big fat ones. The cucumber vines are even more amazing. I counted no less than 12+ rapidly growing, almost ready to pick cukes, and a whole host of baby cukes. This ... all from 2 small/medium sized garden boxes. It's really amazing what you can do in your own backyard. Now, if I could just keep chickens for eggs, and cows for milk, and learn to churn my own butter...

2 comments:

Mary said...

I am so jealous of your harvest! We got our plants in late, so we don't have too much to eat yet. We were able to just start harvesting the yellow squash and the tomatoes are starting to come in. But our weather has been disgusting, so now I'm fearful that they will rot too.

Other Becky said...

Are the tomatoes rotting from the bottom up? If so, that's fixable -- it's called "blossom end rot" and it's caused by too little calcium relative to the amount of nitrogen in the soil. You can buy a calcium solution at a plant store that will stop it. (You can also dissolve calcium tablets in water, but I'm not sure about "dosing" in that case.)