Garden Update

Not too much is going on in the garden right now.  I've got less than 30 days until my first expected frost, but with the cool weather we've had all summer, I'm thinking the frost is coming early.

I've been harvesting a couple of snow peas every day and just eating them right off the vine.  I definitely need more plants in the spring to get a decent harvest!

The tomatoes I planted from seed in July look great!  They are finally starting to set fruit.  I am keeping my fingers crossed that at least a couple of tomatoes have time to mature.  Next year for fall tomatoes, I am going to take clones off of my spring/summer tomatoes, so I should be able to keep a constant supply of tomatoes coming all growing season.

The carrots I planted in the tub a little over a month ago are coming on strong.  I need to finish thinning them still.  I skirted a major disaster the other day when we had torrential rains and I realized that I forgot to drill holes in the bottom of the planting tub!  I went out the next day to see the carrots sitting in over an inch of standing water, and I was sure that I had ruined them.  After drilling the holes and draining the water, however, they were completely fine.  Thank goodness!

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the broccoli that was growing under the row cover.  Why is everyone having such a hard time with broccoli this year?  So far I have yet to see anyone get any good, healthy fall broccoli!  Ugh!  So what happened to the broccoli, you ask?  Well, I had the row cover laid over the broccoli with a couple of sticks on either end to support it.  When we had the torrential rains, the cover was pushed down on top of the broccoli.  Then when the sun came out, the row cover was still wrapped all around the broccoli and it just got fried from the heat.  Note to self:  Next year, bother with making the hoops and doing a better job of securing the row cover.

So that's pretty much it for now.  I'll try to get some pics this weekend.

Snow Pea Harvest

I got to eat my first homegrown snow pea yesterday.  There was only one that was ready to be picked, so I just ate it straight off the vine.  Yum, yum!  I have tons of new flowers forming, so I should get a decent amount soon for some stir-fry.

The pods do come in really fast once the flower forms.  Here is the snow pea pod just three days ago.

Then here it is yesterday, when I harvested it.

The actual plants grew really fast, too!  The seed packet says 72 days to maturity, but it has only been 53 days.  I wasn't expecting snow peas for a while, but I'm glad they decided to come early!

Thinning Carrots

If you have ever planted carrots, you know that the seeds are TINY, and I mean extremely tiny.  Unless you have some kind of special tiny seed planting device, it is very hard to plant these evenly.  So when I planted my carrots a couple of weeks ago, I knew there was going to be some carrot thinning in my future.  I had seeds everywhere!

Now, the first thinning should be done when the carrots are about 2-3 inches tall.  At this point, you only have to thin them to about an inch apart.  I usually just look for the one that looks the best and is the tallest and then pull the others around it out.  Once they start getting bigger, you can do the final thinning to about 2-3 inches apart.  The tool of choice for carrot thinning is tweezers.  It's hard to get your fingers in there without disturbing the carrots that you are leaving in.

There are a lot more carrots than it looks like in this picture.  Several are right on top of each other, so they definitely need to be thinned, even when they are this small.

And the finished product...