Still going...

I am not posting much now because I am spending my time harvesting, and getting ready for back to school. So I am just doing a quick update so my loyal readers don't abandon me.

I have reached 1000 pageviews this week. This impresses me, even knowing some of those are just spammers, and despite my regular clicking on the box asking me to ignore my own pageviews, I assume that my own views are still included there. I try to make sure someone is reading over my shoulder so I stay honest. I also have two new members, and I don't know either of them. I feel like I have really gone "public!"

I have an abundance of beans this year, so many I am freezing them or I would be sick of beans by now. They are very tall, right over the fence and above the chicken wire, so I have coopted my son, who has now surpassed 6'2 and can reach a foot higher than me, to become a bean picker. He has a lot to learn, but if I point he sees them.

I have a lot of varieties of tomatoes ripening. I have two varieties of brown tomatoes, one big and wrinkled and the other the size of a large cherry tomato. I have some round red types from Iulia (beefsteak I think) and several varieties of San Marzanos. There are also some round red ones which I am not sure what they are or where they came from. I also have some small yellow tomatoes, and I have no clue where they came from. I lost track of which were planted and which grew as weeds from the compost. I have been bringing the small brown ones to my various offices to share with my staff and volunteers, and they give them raving reviews. I even have requests for seeds. Thank you Nathalie for the plant!

We have started pureeing the San Marzanos and are going to buy a chest freezer so we don't need to keep borrowing freezer space from Lisa and José and my mom. We plan to have a lot of tomatoes this year.

The slugs seem to have been conquered. I think the 4 bags of Slug-b-gone combined with our having skimped a bit on hay this spring and the lack of rain has knocked them out. I have only seen tiny ones, and my tomatoes are able to ripen on the vine without getting full of holes. I anticipate more flavourful pasta sauce this winter. Josh has been spraying the tomatoes with hydrogen peroxide to counter the bacteria, though some are succumbing anyhow. The cucumbers, however, have been decimated. We had one single cucumber that made it through. I saw another cucumber beetle on a plant, and it disappeared so fast I lost it before I could pick it off.

Chloe has offered us to have a colony garden up at her place next summer to grow the things that are too big for our garden in town. We love the idea. I am starting to think about what I want.