The Crops Are Saved!

Along with "Trouble in the neighborhood!" (when he sees a police car), "The crops are saved!" is one of Joe's favorite catch-phrases. I hear that phrase most when it's finally raining after a long dry spell, so I've heard it some recently. In the last week, we've had almost four inches of rain.

We had a little hail with the first storm, but the damage in my yard was limited to holes in leaves and some leaves knocked off their plants. The storm wasn't too bad in my yard, but the hail that did fall ranged in size from the diameter of nickels to the diameter of quarters:



Plants in other yards had more damage. None of us like to go out and find our plant babies broken in two, but one friend walked out after the storm and found exactly that. It was pretty sad.

The same crops as last week (zucchini, green beans, and cucumbers) are being harvested in my yard. I did, though, dig up the potatoes. I got nearly 18 pounds out of the 4-by-4 foot patch. For Georgia, that's not too terrible. Some of these were roasted tonight to go with supper after being rolled in olive oil and sprinkled with fresh, chopped rosemary and some salt. We had zucchini (sauteed) and blackberry cobbler, too. Have I said yet how much I enjoy eating food that we grew and/or harvested ourselves?



The Provider bush beans have been interesting to harvest. They seem to have a very different production strategy than the Burpee Tenderpod bush beans that I usually grow. Provide puts out a huge burst of beans and then seems to taper off, while the Tenderpod have a slower, steadier pace of production over a long time. I've had Tenderpod plants produce most of the summer, but I don't think the Providers are going to keep going after this big flush of beans is gone.

The good news here is that the pole beans will be sending food to the table soon, so if the Provider plants really do quit, we will still have beans in the yard.