Veggies Piling Up!

Red Pontiac Spuds Dug Today

This morning we pulled over 35 pounds of potatoes from the ground.  These will join the 20 pounds of Yukon Golds harvested earlier.  It's interesting that from the same number of seed potatoes and the same length of row, the red potatoes always deliver almost double the number of spuds.

We have been enjoying these babies fried up with onions, simmered in their skins with butter and chives and mashed of course.  Nothing tastier than a newly dug tater to put a smile on your face.

Onions strung through fence wire to dry under cover of the shed

Each year our techniques for growing, harvesting and drying the onions has improved I think, with this system being the best one yet.  They are now starting to fall to the ground which is my signal they are dry enough to bring inside.

In other garden news; the squash, cukes and beans are really starting to pile up and I'm thinking about what to do with them all in addition to eating veggies at every meal.  The peas got ripped down off the trellis this morning, vines brown and starting to turn white with powdery mildew, time to go.

Eating beets every day now too, and contemplating canning a few jars of pickled beets for the winter.  Carrots are ready to dig and cabbage has taken the place of lettuce in the salad department.  Chard is now the green for cooking in lieu of spinach and kale.

Still waiting eagerly for the tomatoes to start getting ripe, a few Sungold cherries tide us over until the reds begin to ripen up, I see tinges of pink here and there and know it will be soon.  

I'm contemplating which beans to plant where, now that some of the spring crops are out and freeing up space.  If you are a regular reader you know I am a bean-aholic.  Fortex and Garden of Eden pole beans are on the list along with borlotto shell beans and purple hull peas.   New to try this season are black and white calico shell beans, also called yin yang beans.  

As always there is no end to the garden chores at this time of the year, but we plug along trying to get something done each morning before it gets too hot.

The day lilies are going crazy now and offer a place to pause and take in the beauty during any trip across the yard.

I'm off to organize a dish for the community garden potluck tonight where we will be digging spuds and cooking them up as part of our event.  As much as we need rain, I hope it doesn't come between 5-8 tonight in Carrboro.