Garden update

I haven't been posting about my garden this year, but suffice it to say that it is doing very well, despite the drought. I have 150 gallons of rainwater in three barrels, and it has rained just enough to keep them from running out. I did get down to about 10 gallons at one point, but then we received our only substantial rain all summer—one inch—and they got filled up again. Otherwise, we are getting 0.25–0.50 inches per week, some weeks not even that. Just for perspective, we normally receive an inch a week.

That being said, the upside is that there aren't any slugs and very few mosquitoes!

As for produce, I picked my first full-sized tomato on Saturday. I'm growing Wisconsin 55s this year, and I transplanted them on May 15, so about 60 days. The variety is called "55" because they are a short-season indeterminate variety that is supposed to bear in 55 days.

This is my third season growing them. I like them because they are a nice medium-sized tomato that is perfect for freezing. I core them, and then freeze them whole. To use them, I drop them in the hot water for my soup, let them stew for about a minute and then skin them. If you wait any longer, they become too mushy to skin easily. One or two is perfect for a soup for one or two people.

My pak choi did extremely well. I grew nine plants and cut them up and froze them. That should be enough to last until about March. The peas did well, too. They have been done for about three weeks now and my third planting of beans is up there. I'll plant again at the beginning of August for a fall crop.

The raspberries have been going for about 10 days now. The patch doesn't produce enough to really freeze any, but it does give us a nice serving every day.

For summer squash, I'm growing patty pans and zephyr. I freeze the zephyr, cutting them up into sandwich bags and putting those inside a gallon freezer bag; I get about 8–9 bags per gallon. I add those to the soups on the days I don't use pac choi. Patty pans don't freeze as well as the zephyr, so I just use those fresh and also give them away.

My first and second planting of green beans (Provider) have been producing for about three weeks now and the first crop is about done. I'm planning to pull the first planting this week and plant a fourth crop there. I think I'll let the second planting bloom again and try saving the seeds. I've never saved Provider before, so we'll see how that goes. They are open pollinated and produce reliably whatever the weather, which in our current drought is very nice.

The onions and garlic are done and drying in the garage on a folding table. After a couple of weeks, I'll clean them up and store them in the basement. Last year we had enough onions to last until the walking onions started producing and them when the greens on the walking onions got too tough and started producing little onions, we switched to the green onions, which were just big enough. The green onions are done now, and I've been using the small little onions on the walking onions, but pretty soon I'll start using the red onions that are drying.

We had enough garlic to almost last until the new crop. We were about 3 weeks short. Hopefully this year it will be enough. I'll save some for seed, planting in October. I also am going to try some Red German garlic. We'll see how that goes. It's a hardneck, so I'll have scapes to eat. Should be fun!

OK, that's enough for now, although I will end by saying that the only disappointment this year is the strawberries. I bought 30 plants, but only 14 grew—and none of them bloomed. They were slow starting out but are now sending out runners like crazy, so maybe next year. (Gardeners are hopeless optimists!)