Holy Peas!

So, settling back in after Fan Faire is being fun. Kiddo's pretty upset with us and is acting out hard here and at school. I've got load of information to sort through from Fan Faire for Allakhazam. And hubby started his new job Thursday morning. Which is good, but since he's been home most of the summer Kiddo will probably react a bit.

I'm glad he's back at work, and not just because of money. This job is completely different from the customer service and sales he somehow ended up in after leaving the Army, and he desperately needed a change. This job incorporates almost every bit of training he's ever had - except sales!

So Tuesday I ran over to check the garden, as it'd been over a week since I was last there. On the way the skies opened up and we had a torrential deluge, the pull-you-car-over-because-you-can't-see type. So when I got there all the potato plants are lying down and the garden looks distressing.

Telling myself they'll spring back ('cause they do) I grab my produce basket and see what we've got. There's mixed results. The lettuce is pretty much a lost cause. I don't know whether Romaine doesn't do well in that soil or it was just too wet this summer. Half the zucchini are rotting on the vine, but I find three really nice ones. The Farmer's Market vendors tell me they're hearing of a lot of that, and give me some hints for next year.

My peas are still going NUTS. It's a raised garden, and I have to step up on the border to get to the top peas. They're positively bulging. I have more carrots topping. The carrots came up nice and thick despite thinning, so I pull all the ones I see tops on to make more room.



The onions did so-so. We overplanted the garden and they're having a hard time getting anough room to grow. I get one big one, and some of the green onions I planted a couple weeks ago.

The parsnips that did take have huge leaves, but you don't harvest those until after the frost, so I move on. Grandpa cut back the leaves on the Brussels Sprouts when they started sprouting, and there's tons of itty bitty sprouts everywhere. The four corn plants are nice and tall and have beautiful tassels.

My herbs are doing so-so. I planted them between the tomatoes and the tomatoes have completely taken over, so the only thing doing really well is the parsley. I grab a handful of parsley to dry.

And there's tomatoes! If you recall my tomatoes have done so well that the cherry tomato plant turned into a tree and the Early Girls (an Alaskan hybrid that does really well in our high light short summers) can't hold themselves up. I get about a dozen nice tomatoes.


Then I get it all home and have to DO something with it! When the garden really starts producing edibles was can't eat them fast enough so I sit down to shell peas and chop carrots and fire up my kitchen kettle to blanche and freeze. We'll have really nice produce all winter.

Today I'm making salsa from the tomatoes, and tomorrow we'll g0 back and see what else we can harvest!

If you'd like more information on blanching and freezing vegetables, try these links:

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Focus_On_Freezing/index.asp
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/freeze/blanching.html
http://www.pickyourown.org/freezing_summer_squash.htm