from the beefsteak plants. i picked about a
dozen yesterday and had my first toasted tomato
sandwich.

the cherry tomatoes have three red-orange
tomatoes on them. between two plants. that's
just odd here. usually they are loaded and
ready a week or two before the beefsteaks.

yesterday i finally got the garlic out of
the ground, with the rains we've had the past
few weeks it's just been too wet and yesterday
wasn't much better but at least i wasn't muddy.
after getting the garlic out of the ground i
still had so much dirt on them that i hosed them
off. this really was a mistake. after i
noticed that some of them were already starting
to get mold on them it's just not a good thing
to have them wet again.

so i had big box tops and extra towels to lay
them out to dry and rotated them a few times.
i'll be doing the same today.

as for the size of the garlic heads, most were
excellent, as i had planted the largest cloves
from the previous harvest. spacing them out a
bit more seemed to help too. it made it much
easier for weeding to have a little more room
in between the plants.

picked more green and wax beans the other day
and made a three bean salad (with onion).

finally checked the squash plants and saw some
already full sized fruits on them. moved a few
branches so they don't smother the nearby bush
and to keep them out of the sunflowers.

some of my first pea plantings that were eaten
by the groundhogs have sprung back and are now
flowering like they should have three weeks ago.
with all the rain and cooler weather perhaps
they will actually bear a crop. as some were
from my special select peas that i am trying to
increase my seed supplies this is good news.
haven't seen a groundhog in a few weeks now
*knocks on wood head*. the snap peas really did
not germinate well this season so a few of those
growing would be nice to see too. seems like i
had a hard time getting them going last year too.

other things are ready, but i'm not going
to be doing much other than some digging today
to get the garden around the garlic all turned and
the edge weeded so that the plants don't drop
seeds into the neighboring limestone pathway. if
i'm smart i'll do the edge weeding first as when
i get digging i tend to work until i can't do
much else for a while.


songbird