The Fruits of Gardening

Aug. 10, 2011

Just before a week on the road I harvested the first cucumbers, beans, zucchinis and potatoes from my vegetable garden.  Nine days later after returning, the beans were starting to get over ripe, there were tons of zucchini, and there were some cucumbers fit to make little boats but not to eat.  Sweet corn is offered for sale now along the roadsides and my sweet corn is one week from harvest.  One of my main joys in life is biting into a fresh ear of sweet corn.  Onions are growing at a very rapid rate.  One tomato has ripened but it was split and not fit to eat.  Another few days and more will ripen.  In the northern climates all things are not early season.

The old over ripe fruit has been harvested and discarded.  Cucumbers, zucchini and beans will continue to blossom and grow new produce.  Items like cabbage and broccoli are more once and done vegetables even though they try to re-grow.

Peaches, apricots, raspberries, raspberry jam, and apricot jam

While traveling from the great Northern plains to the West I had the opportunity to buy some peaches and apricots.  We have harvested loads of raspberries from our plants.  We are filling our fruit jars.  Two weeks ago it looked like we would have loads of blueberries on our 6 bushes.  There are hardly any as a chipmunk has climbed up and eaten more than his share and left us with a handful.

Yesterday for dinner we had zucchini cut in half and filled with a scrambled egg zucchini flesh mixture with cheese melted over it and small red potatoes.  They were delicious.  Tonight we had a crock pot meal of corned beef with cabbage, green beans, carrots, and garden russet potatoes that had been cooking all day.

Harvest is now in full force with more zucchini than I can give away and enough cucumbers to make pickles.  The two types of pickles I will make are little whole dills from cucumbers 2 to 3 inches long and bread and butter pickles from larger cucumbers cut up.  Last night my daughter and I snapped, processed and froze about 8 packages of beans.  Tonight 13 pints of sweet and dill pickles were made. 

After having almost perfect weed control another round of new weeds has emerged and is growing exponentially trying to get seeds produced before the season ends in 6 to 7 weeks.  Rain has been abundant and in good fertile soil some of the plants are over running others even on 4 foot row spacing.

I have two gardens, one to eat from and one for research.

The purpose for such a large research garden is to test two chemicals.  One is for disease control and the other for insect control.  One of the major insects has been Colorado potato beetle.  The insecticide is sold commercially for beetle control and is completely controlling the beetles.  The potatoes not treated are completely defoliated.  The cabbage, broccoli and brussel sprouts are being chewed rapidly by cabbage worms.  The insecticide does not control those worms.  Later thrips on onions will be counted and powdery mildew on various plant species will be measured.  For good thrip numbers we need more hot dry weather.  So far, no disease is evident.  There are also five species of flowers. 

The two purposes of this research is to determine if spraying the chemical will harm the vegetation it is sprayed on and if the fungicide controls disease and the insecticide kills insects.  The two chemicals are sprayed alone and then a combination of the two is sprayed.  The chemicals and combination treatment are sprayed at the use rate and at four times the use rate to simulate over application.  Over application is often done by homeowners even though it is not necessary.  Amongst garden chemical testing, the main mantra is “Do No Harm” as sometimes the cure is worse than the problem.