August meanderings by Sue@Lmu

Isn’t this amazing? It was one of the last tomato I cut making tomato soup base to can last week. I’ve canned about 4 dozen jars so far of salsa, soup, and tomatoes. We have the best tomatoes we’ve ever had. I think the droughty June helped as much as the florida weave, serenade and copper fungicide. Happily the drought ended about the 1st of July then we had the monsoons.
Our gourd arch is filling in nicely and baby gourds are emerging.
She saved all the little basil leaves to make pesto.
Oh the joy of digging potatoes with children for the first time. Yesterday morning I showed another family how to dig potatoes and the squeals of delight are so heart filling.

Mr. Bill went wild in the corn patch last wednesday as you can see. By thursday morning it was all home with members being eaten and preserved. My current favorite dish is throwing the garden at my nonstick frying pan. I put a little butter and olive oil in it then add onions, garlic, and peppers till softened then corn, okra, beans, green tomatoes, tomatilla’s and summer squash salt and pepper to taste ahhhhh heaven.
So those are the highlights of the garden happiness. We’ve have the most productive and weeds under control gardens we’ve ever had for which we are most grateful. Members have been pitching in for which we are most grateful.
Our greatest challenge currently is our beans are being decimated by bean beetles. We tried to spray with spinosad and neem but the rain kept us from doing a very good job. The Japanese beetles were fearsome too. For a couple weeks we walked the rows dropping them into containers of soapy water. We captured thousands of both the Japanese and Bean beetles but alas our bean plants are now mostly bare. We have harvested a tremendous amount of beans though and there are still good beans on the vines. Hopefully they will make a comeback and give us more.
Happy harvesting and eating everyone!