I enjoyed myself yesterday puttering in the kitchen and canning some sweet relish. The crabapples on our tree are beginning to ripen nicely. Once they’re ready to be picked, I’ll steam-juice some and try my hand at crabapple jelly.
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| Zucchini Relish |
Saturday was breezy and 13 degrees. It felt like Autumn. The last two days have been sunny but cool and breezy. The 14-Day forecast calls for daytime highs between 16 and 20 degrees Celsius. In August. Remember the “old days”, when August was stinking hot?! The weather this summer and last has been nuts. Meanwhile, other parts of the country are dealing with heat warnings (e.g., it was 34 degrees in Halifax this past weekend). Looking on the bright side, at least we haven’t had to manhandle the air conditioner this year. It is still covered in storage. Meanwhile, I’ve been making hot chocolate at least once a week all summer.
The tomato plants are still covered with lots of yellow flowers. It’s almost like they are stuck at this stage, especially the Candy Sweet Icicle and Hungarian Italian Paste varieties. The varieties that typically produce large tomatoes (e.g., Work Release Paste, Black Krim, etc.), have put out fruit that is on the small side and some are misshapen as well. The Striped German plants (a large bicolour beefsteak variety) only have a few tomatoes at this point and they are the size of grapes. Yesterday, I noticed blossom end rot on some of the Jewish and Auria tomatoes, which had otherwise been doing reasonably well considering the poor growing weather. The Bellestar tomatoes look like they are doing okay and are “on schedule” (they are an early determinate variety).
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| Jewish tomato |
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| Auria tomato |
Several Galeux D’Eysines squash have been hand-pollinated and they have set. The weather in the coming weeks will determine whether they will be able to mature before heavy frosts hit.
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| The largest Galeux D'Eysines. The others are the size of a tennis ball. |
I harvested 3 zucchini (for the relish) and there are two small zucchini still growing on the plants. It is so nice that we’ve been able to get a bit of summer squash this year!
One of the two jalapeno plants has produced a few peppers. Neither of the Anaheim pepper plants have peppers yet, but one is putting out flowers now. Needless to say, it is rather late in the season to be just now putting out flowers.
The broccoli plants have produced heads, but they are small (~5 inches across) and are already starting to bolt. The plants as a whole are quite large. The ones we harvested were delicious. I wish we had about 20 of them to process for freezing!
The carrots look like they are doing well. They still need another month to grow. The “snackers” – ones pulled to thin the rows – have been tasty.
The cabbages seem to be faring well and are slowly forming heads.
The dry bush beans have loads of flowers and some are starting to develop pods, especially Beka Brown. Agate pinto is almost entirely in the flower stage, so I am not sure it will have time to mature before frost.
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| Agate Pinto beans |
The snap beans (Red Swan, Calima, and 3 little Roma bean plants) are, to my surprise, flowering and beginning to develop beans. The plants are so small – only a few inches tall, in most cases – that I didn’t think we would get any snap beans this year.
The lettuce, kale, chard, lemon balm, sage, and parsley have done well. They seem to do fine in this cooler weather.
This has been my first time growing Alaska Red Shades nasturtium, and it has been a breath of fresh air. They produce masses of deep red flowers and the leaves are variegated. Pretty!
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| Alaska Red Shades nasturtium |
I’m curious to see how the garlic has fared. Usually, it is harvested mid-August, but it won’t be ready to pull by mid-month this year, judging from the leaves. It will be left in the ground a bit longer.
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| A fuzzy bee enjoying the Bachelor Buttons. |
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