The tomatoes have fallen over and are in need of a new trellis and pruning. We spent some time on that this afternoon, mostly picking fruit. We have ‘bloom end rot’ for the first time ever. Usually by the end of the season we are dealing with ‘black spotty mildew’ but that seems to have past us by. There were a few rotten tomatoes still on the vine, most had already fallen off. There is no way of knowing exactly how much fruit we lost from lack of harvesting.
On the other hand, the eggplants have made a decent comeback. I was doubting that we would have any, between the condition of the plants when I purchased them and the drought. I was very happy to see a nice sized fruit on four of my six plants.
The zucchini are still pumping out nice fruit. I’m still stumbling into oversized ones every now and then as well as orange speckled ones. The orange ones aren’t good to eat. The skins are thick as well as the seeds. They must be a cross with the pumpkins. I will have to make a note not to plant them next to each other.
The carrots are a finger-sized variety and they seem to be doing ok. I have no idea when to harvest them, so I dug some up today. They are about what I expected. Next year we should plant a lot more.
The broccoli surprised me. They had been doing so poorly with aphids and worms that I hadn’t paid any attention to them. When we were out today, I saw that they had made a complete recovery and even put out some nice sized heads. Fresh broccoli is among our favorites, so you can imagine the disappointment when we saw those beautiful yellow flowers. Yes, now even the broccoli has gone to seed.
The cucumbers are not worth the time so they are left to self seed. One plant did well when it was shaded by the corn but is only doing as well as the others now.
The pumpkins are a bit smaller and fewer than hoped for but they make a great kitchen counter display. Our melons came in as miniature sized this year but oh how sweet. The peppers are stunted and put out one fruit at a time. I let the lettuce go to seed and it makes a nice flower accent for the vegetables.
The only other thing to report would be my walking onions. They seem to have come back to life. I had only started off with three and two had wilted and all but died during the drought. They have come back with the rains that we have been having. The large plant that produced seemed to have bloated with the rain and didn’t look so well. The small top set had turned black but now has new little green sprouts growing from the center of each bulb. These onions are such a mystery to me. I need to read up on them some more.
This is a picture of some of our harvest today.
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