Planning for More Good Food

Twenty pound "Luscious Golden" melon from our front yard.

My not updating the blog for 3 weeks doesn't mean the garden isn't still a productive and wonderful place. It is, actually, providing surprising quantities of good food, considering that it also has been a little neglected.

We are running short-staffed at work, during our busiest time of year, and work-stuff has spilled over into my non-work time. However, the bosses have interviews lined up to fill at least one vacant space, so we are hopeful that the whole "short-staffed" thing will be short-lived!

In the meantime, I am thinking more and more about the fall garden. Last weekend, I amended some areas with compost, planted seeds for chicory, beets, parsley, green onions, and one last patch of bush beans, and I started seeds (late!) in a flat for broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, more beets (in case the outside seeds don't make it -- they can be finicky), and bok choy.



Joe used the grub hoe to knock down some of the buckwheat, to start getting that space ready for carrots, and I pulled up and chopped the corn stalks to add them to the compost.

This year's corn was a parching corn, Supai Red, from the Southwestern US, and it was not super-happy with our rain and humidity. Some ears turned moldy before they had a chance to dry on the stalks, so the harvest was not huge, but the corn I brought in is going to make some great hominy.

Indoors, we have more tomatillos than we thought possible piled up on the counter, waiting to be made into salsa verde; the dehydrator is busy turning slices of tomato and okra into "chips"; and peppers are fermenting into hot sauce. There is some work involved in preserving the harvest, but the flavors of summer will be very welcome in the cooler months ahead.