Garden Harvest & Update August 14

The garden has been producing quite steadily. I had to pull the leaf lettuce as it was getting too bitter to even eat mixed in with other lettuce. I'm thinking I'll try some Bibb lettuce in those planters for Fall. I also ripped out some tomato plants, trimmed up a few more and pulled a few plants from a perennial bed.

Let's tour the garden:

I've started pinching off the ends of the watermelon and cantaloupe vines, hoping they will focus their energy into ripening their loads of fruit.  The climbing vine on left side is the cantaloupe, on the right is pickling cukes.

A better shot of the pickling cukes...they are growing like crazy! Lots of fruit have set, too.

My slicing cukes that were supposed to be bush are starting to yellow. The plants look terrible but they are still producing. The cabbage is looking good, too!

The cantaloupe vines growing up the privacy fence. Next year, we'll trellis these bad boys!

My pathetic pole beans. I got them started late, then we had massive rains, then the tomatoes grew too tall so they got shaded, then it was scorching hot....sigh. I pruned back the tomatoes and they are starting to take off. I don't expect to get much out of them, however. Lesson learned: put the darn tomatoes somewhere else!

This is the perennial bed that I've started reworking. To the left of the photo is our deck, in the background is the neighbor's yard-blocked visually by the 12-15' miscanthus (currently about 8' tall). I re-edged the lawn and pulled out a few plants that I just don't like (a red-orange day lily and some wandering Russian Sage). I planted iris "Caesar's Brother" on either side of Bryce's little playhouse. If you look hard you can see tent poles; this is a shade tent we use for Bryce. The lawn  underneath stays nice and green!

Here's what I harvested:

Monday

A nice sized cuke, several tomatoes, even more cherry tomatoes, a jalepeno my garden "assistant" (Bryce) just HAD to pick, and a few onions picked as green onions. Not too bad! The dark tomato is an heirloom vairiety called "Black Prince". It has a nice mild, sweet flavor.

Tuesday

The remaining leaf lettuce (and I pulled the roots and chucked them in the compost), 2 tomatoes and a few cherry tomatoes. It was a "cool" day today (only in the low 80's) and we got about 2-3 inches of rain last night and I think the plants were trying perk up after the pummeling they took!

Wednesday

Yikes!  What are those? I went out to harvest some parsley and found these 2 guys chomping away on the parsley plants. The kids and I googled what type of caterpillar they are (Black Swallowtail) and "harvested" them by bringing them in on their parsley stems. We're feeding them and hope they will do their "magic" here in the house.

Thursday

I harvested a lot of parsley for the caterpillars-boy, can they eat! I'm having trouble regulating the watering of the tomatoes so they are cracking; I've been picking them when they just start to blush & then ripen them on the table outside.
Friday

I pulled my cherry tomato plants, "Sweet 100" because they are making me crazy!  The tomatoes are very small, they are NOT sweet and they crack like crazy! They also grew taller than I'd expected and were shading my jalepeno plants too much, so out they went! This is really the first time ever that I've ripped out a veggie plant. I have always felt it was wasteful to rip out a happily producing plant, but I'm over that! ( ha ha). Now the peppers can fill in and those darn Sweet 100's won't vex me anymore. The yellow variety is an heirloom called "Jubilee" and I really like it's sweetness.
Saturday

Agh. Not much. It's been cool and rainy the past few days so the garden has slowed down. But the cukes are YUMMY and are eaten practically before I can get into the house. 


Sunday

I needed some green onions so I went out and harvest 10 ounces of AMAZING organic green onions. Fresh green onions are much stronger than store-bought. They're larger, too-these were each about 2 feet long. 

I've harvested about 26 pounds of produce so far, and used over 700 gallons of rain water. (the rain water is used on everything-veggie garden, perennial beds, water ballons, etc).

Caterpillar Update
We started with 2 Black Swallowtail caterpillars, brought them in and fed them judiscious amounts of organic parsley. It was fun watching them eat and eat and eat! After they eat and eat, they poop and poop!

One was smaller than the other and it didn't survive. The remaining caterpillar ate like a pig and on Friday evening began racing all over his habitat. We learned that he was looking for just the right stick to form a chrysallis and that maybe his habitat was too big.

We switched up his habitat, putting him in a canning jar with just 2 sticks to choose from. We covered the jar with a coffee filter and put him outside for the night.

He found a good spot, spun a silk thread and now we wait to see him change.
****Update: The caterpillar has formed it's chrysalis!!!!!!!! Soooooo cool.

This post linked to Daphne's Dandelions. An Oregon Cottage. Ms Green Thumb Jean, Sidewalk Shoes Garden Tuesday, Fishtail Cottage,