You probably know this already, but... in your basket #8 should have been some beans, a few okra, a few leaves of kale, maybe a collard green leaf (I picked all the ones that still looked good, despite the insane harlequin bug pressure... but that was not many), a couple of cucumbers, a garlic, and six or so slicer tomatoes.
 |
| You should've gotten several ripe and delicious tomatoes, like these =) |
 |
| Thanks for at least leaving some chard leaves, Mr. Bear... |
This share basket was almost not to be... I think I told the story well enough to everyone who came to pickup, but I will reiterate / summarize one last time here: I fell asleep mid-day yesterday (due mostly to the extra six hours from coming back over the Atlantic), and napped for hours instead of hour... and in addition to being late for share pickup, was unable to add certain things to the baskets that I had planned to (some of our potatoes, some nice and freshly-sour sumac berries, and some sprigs of rosemary). I'm glad we at least had a surplus of tomatoes from the morning harvest, to make up for the otherwise rushed basket.
For people who are interested, I found four new developments upon returning to the vegetable plot yesterday (we have been out of town for two and a half weeks, so its been a really big QUESTION MARK exactly how we'd find things upon our return). FIRST, practically all of the squash plants have been killed by vine borer larvae. Pretty gruesome way to go as a plant, if you don't know about these guys look it up. Some of you might be happy to be relieved of squash, LOL, although it was impressive and prolific while it lasted. SECOND, I discovered via two piles of poop and a mess of discarded leaves that a bear has been coming to the garden... decimating our Swiss chard plants as well as digging up lots of our beets. I included a picture here of some of the leaves that the bear left... it literally nibbled down the tops of every other root that was sprouting chard for us. Our fence was never designed to keep out more than just rabbits, field mice, woodchucks and MOST deer... and this bear will likely return to do more feasting on these crops. Cross your fingers that we have ANY of these two crops still to share, in future baskets!
THIRD, the rain we've apparently been getting has been too much of a good thing -- for our tomato plants at least. We prepared to where a visitor could run the irrigation pump when/if a drought developed these past weeks, and the plants in the garden could survive thusly... but it turns out that it has been raining more-than-enough while we've been away. The entire row of tomatoes had hip-high weeds on both sides of them, which killed air circulation and turned practically every ripe or ripening tomato even slightly nibbled on by a slug turn into a white mold bomb. You see the pretty good tomato harvest evident in your basket and the 'bonus box'? This was only about 25% of all ripe fruit. I had to throw away 25% (total loss to white mold), another 25% I was able to rescue as sauce tomatoes (see pic above) due to only having one or two smaller white-moldy spots, and yet another 25% I kept from the sharebaskets as they had eaten away spots here and there from the damned slugs. Those are sitting in our fridge at the moment, waiting to be made into salads when needed. GRRRRRR!!!! I did spend a while pulling out all the tall weeds all around the tomato plants, and there remain lots of green fruit to ripen... so hopefully we can have a strong showing for the last two baskets!!!!
FINALLY, the harlequin beetles, an annual pest of anything and everything that we try to grow in the Brassicae family, have take the past half-month to set up shop in and on most of our kale (and, our collards). They like hanging out on the top leaves of the plants, sipping on the mustard-oil-containing tissue here and there and advertising themselves for the damned bug-sex that they do. What it meant for the look of things is that practically all of the foliage now has small, greyish patches where the leaf plant cells have died (from the slurping). I tried to pick the nicest of the remaining underside-leaves (relatively un-partied on by the bugs) for the basket yesterday, but I do apologize if you still happened to see some of the patching I am describing and were like 'what the heck, I wanted sexy kale... not this!' I spent a good twenty or so minutes killing every beetle that could be seen on the kale, so the plants might recover... but do not be surprised if the kale we bring you in future baskets is not picture-perfect anymore :(
Two more weeks of veggie goodness for you all... and I promise I won't fall asleep on you all again!
Matt
