These Two Hands

Tomatoes aren’t the only fruit slowly ripening in the garden.

The peppers all look very healthy this year, much better than last year. Perhaps because I remembered to include an eggshell in each planting hole (they need calcium). The stink bugs are better this year so far, too. But I haven’t gotten a ripe pepper yet. Of the three varieties I planted – jalapeño, chervena chuska, and cascabel – the cascabels seem the happiest. It’s kind of funny because I planted them on a whim from some seed I saved from a gift pepper. I hope they’re delicious.

Our first baby watermelon already rivals a grapefruit in size. I’m so excited! There’s nothing better than a sweet, juicy watermelon on a hot summer day. It’s a joy that I never knew until I moved to a region with hot, humid summers. In fact, up til I moved here I didn’t even think I liked watermelon.

Unfortunately these are a seeded variety (Crimson Sweet I think), which makes for difficult eating. I always want to eat seedless watermelons, but the cheapskate in me doesn’t want to have to buy new seed every year. There’s something so satisfying about saving seed from year to year.

My oats are ready for harvest and if the temperatures hadn’t been so hot, they would have been cut already. I had thought I was planting wheat here and was so excited to grind my own flour… but I’m pleased to have oats as well. I will try to cook some with them, but is a very small patch and we don’t eat all that many oats. At the very least they will supplement my organic chicken feed – which has just jumped in price by another 20%! I’m starting to resent it every time I have to refill the chicken feeder.

I think growing more of my own chicken feed, plus actually growing real wheat, will stay on the table as goals for next year. I’m thinking fields of sunflowers and amaranth – oh how beautiful that could be if the soil would just cooperate!

I left about 5 apples on our Gala tree and so far they are ripening beautifully! They are very small, but that’s to be expected on such a young tree. I’m not quite sure when to pick them… I just hope I get them before the deer do.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 24th, 2011 at 10:48 am and is filed under garden & farm, food, homesteading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.