It all happened so suddenly - before I knew it, the melons were here! Ben and I literally stumbled upon the first casabas a few days ago. They are so well-camouflaged that I hadn't noticed them, and they were already the size of a football.
Sungold Casaba
Same story with the eggplants. I had been observing a Rosa Bianca developing for a few weeks, and all of a sudden we had several fully-ripe Pintung Longs on our hands.
The icing on the cake: we did it completely organically! We had thought that eggplant would be the one thing with which we would have to use "something serious". But, they won the battle with the flea beetles, and we didn't have to use anything stronger than neem oil. It's a great time for the garden right now.
Pintung Long
Yesterday's eggplant harvest
Today's kitchen garden harvest
There is basil all over the place. It grows with the tomatoes, in the herb garden, the greenhouse, and in this raised bed. I gathered one pound of basil this morning. I guess I'll be freezing pesto today.
Genovese Sweet Basil
Nothing goes better with basil than a nice tomato. We've been harvesting tomatoes every day for weeks now. I've canned most of them, and I'll be canning a lot more. We have thirty early and mid-season tomato plants in full production now, and I recently put in a dozen late Black Plum Paste tomatoes. We also have five volunteer tomatoes scattered about.
Clockwise from top: Moonglow and Persimmon, Red Brandywine and Black Sea Man, Speckled Roman
Speckled Roman
Black Sea Man
I couldn't be more pleased with our peppers this summer. There are over one-hundred of them ripening at this moment. They'll be dried, pickled, roasted, and put into salsas.
Hot Portugal
Wisconsin Lakes
Ancho Gigantea
This is my first year seriously growing pumpkins. The pie pumpkins will be ready just in time to brew pumpkin ale late this summer. I got them in the ground early so that we'd be drinking pumpkin ale by the fall.
Pie Pumpkin
I planted the Young's Beauty pumpkins a little later for pumpkin pies.
Young's Beauty pumpkin patch.
The Australian Butter Squash is gorgeous, but there isn't much of it.
Australian Butter Squash
Corn! The stalks are loaded. I staggered the plantings, so it will be coming in for several weeks.
True Gold
Sugar Pearl
Dakota Black Popcorn
I will be making sweet pickles very soon. That will be a first for me. I hope they turn out okay.
Snow's Fancy Pickling Cucumber
Northern Pickling
I still haven't seen any Amish melons, but the watermelons are plumping up.
Sugar Baby
And we finally have sunflowers!
Taiyo
Autumn Beauty
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