Journal of a Gardener

July 17

Patty picked green beans today.  She had enough to can, but because of work in getting into our new house, she gave some of the beans to a cousin instead.

July 16

I picked the first harvest of purple hull peas.  The two gallon dish pan was spilling over with peas.  Patty spent half the afternoon shelling, blanching and freezing about six pints and cooking enough for the table for two or three days.  I also brought in a big harvest of mixed lettuce, arrugula, cucumbers and zuchinni.  We now live nearly four miles from the garden.  One or both of us go nearly every morning as soon as we get breakfast and gather what is ready. 

July 15

I gathered a three gallon Tupperware dish pan full of green beans this morning.  We also gathered several cucumbers, some squash and some grape tomatoes.  A vole has tunneled under one hill of spaghetti squash and the vines are dying.  We will try a couple of the more mature fruits from these vines before they dry up even though they need another month for full maturity.  The volunteer sunflower is turning down now and the ones I planted late are a couple feet tall.  Only a half dozen cosmos plants are coming from the spot I sowed.  No Shasta daisies have germinated and only a half dozen zinnias are growing.  Okra is growing rapidly and the first blooms are beginning to show.  The leaves are large and the stalks are short.  It will be hard to find the okra pods.

July 14

We did not get to the garden today.

July 13

In the late afternoon my great nephew, D. J., and his friend, Whitt, helped with the harvest of Japanese beetles, green beans, zuchinni, tomatoes and onions.  They each peeled and tasted a green onion.  They threw most of the two onions away.  They liked the grape tomatoes better.  Patty marked just under 2 inches of water in the rain gauge from last night’s rainfall.  We took mixed lettuce and cucumbers to Janet, my sister-in-law and she shared her delicious spaghetti with us.

July 10-12

Patty and I bought a house and moved into it on the 12^th.  There was little time for harvesting these days because of the move, and so we invited family and friends to get beans, cucumbers, squash, lettuce, onions and tomatoes.  I took time to get two or three dozen Japanese beetles each time I visited.  Honey bees, bumble bees and wasps are feeding off of the blossoms of beans, peas, squash, cucumbers and okra.