Harvesting sweet potatoes, kohl rabi and more

Last  spring some of the sweet potatoes I had purchased near Thanksgiving and began to sprout.I investigated how to produce sweet potato slips from them and successfully came up with about 12 slips. Digging into the bed behind my shed and readying it for the slips was the easiest part. Not much grows in the summer heat and I was pretty busy with camp anyway. The vines got really rangy and in August I snipped some and shoved them into a pot just for greens. I should have used a bigger pot as when I pulled the soil out it was full of little fingerling potatoes.Last

With a frost predicted this week I began harvesting my sweet potatoes. I decided to use my weed weasel in hopes that I would not damage the potatoes. Great choice! The harvest was not bad, about 3 gallon jugs but I probably would have had more if I had known to cut my vines and either harvest the leaves or just have more individual plants. As it is I put up three bags of leaves for creaming and probably will have another two or three bags this week as I complete the harvest.

Some of the kohl rabi from last year didn't make any  rabes or bulbs but because the leaves are so tasty I left six or seven of them in the garden. After all of the heavy rains during the last month, imagine my surprise that they're making rabes or bulbs. With the cold weather I have pulled the last of the okra plants and am still harvesting A handful of green beans that survived the bugs. It is still nice to have a variety of fresh vegetables right from the yard. We still have several eggplant in the garden that are full of blooms and baby eggplants as well as green peppers that probably will need to be covered with plastic to survive these cool fronts.

Summer harvests are slow but keep coming

 We are really eating from the garden even in the heat. The trick is to make great stuff with the vegetables that are coming to harvest and rotate in the ones that I put into the freezer. We are getting better at this after having tomatoes at night for weeks--George is not complaining. As the heat has increased we are seeing a lot more eggplants setting fruit. The weird rains  in July though meant the tomatoes are all having some blossom rot again. Black-eye peas are coming on and so is the malabar spinach--finally found a lettuce from Nevada that might be able to survive in the shade and give us some leaves. Just when I thought the greens were dying down the kale has gone nuts from the rain (it should be dead) and we are doing kale chips. Celery is growing well and actually looks like little stalks. Doing rainwater only on the property is a bit tough some days. Hopefully next year I can get an irrigation system of some kind to work off the barrels.
All of the onions and garlic are now in the house in keeping. Garlic tastes great and smells so good. Red onions are not sweet but are terrific--now if they just have the same kind this fall! Only one more meal of potatoes and they are all gone. Asparagus though is thriving so maybe next spring we'll have a good harvest.

Tomatoes are a challenge but just keep coming

the weather this year has not been a good friend to the tomatoes but they just keep coming. The challenge are that the Early Girls, Brandywines, Jaunne Faumes, and Super sweet 100 are suffering from early blight. In researching this, I should have been giving them preventative treatment to counteract the really wet spring we have had. I have trimmed off the diseased leaves each week and thrown them in the trash. Good news is they are putting on new growth and still producing and I have a round dozen of them. We are eating fresh tomatoes every day--someday I will put some by.

The San Marzanos in the front are having intermittant blossom end rot issues. Have found that if I pick them a little green and use them with the rot cut off they are just fine. We like green tomatoes too. The extra dose of tomato fertilizer was not much help--heavy rains a few days later. On the advise of a friend I have given them a good dose of calcium carbonate--she said smash rocks but I figure it comes in pills so dissolve a handful and use that. There are only 5 plants. They are full of tomatoes both with and without the BER. The black cherries looked bad but are coming back--every day 2-5 of these beauties and the Thai pink egg is a stunner. we just pick and pick on this one. As it is in a container I have rigged a watering bottle to help through the high 90s days we are now having.

June Garden Guild meeting

Judy Barrett, author of: What Can I Do With My Herbs?  What Makes Heirloom Plants So Great? Recipes From And For The Garden, Tomatillos: A Gardener's Dream A Cook's Delight,

will be the presenter on Herbs.  Judy makes frequent appearances on Central Texas Gardener and is a recognized expert in her field.  You can check her out on the sites listed:
    www.HomegrownTexas.com
    HomegrownTexas@yahoo.com

We'll meet as usual at 10:30 AM at the Rec. Center to share plants, seeds and conversation and the meeting will start at 11:00.  Come join us for a delightful time of sharing and learning.