Sunday, August 31, 2008

Wow, tomatoes and potatoes!

Ok, we had a period there with lots of rain and then some drainage issues because the farmer irrigating the meadow next to us had left the water running in the ditch closest to use for rather too long. I didn't have to water at all for at least a week, and certainly the garden looked a little oxygen-starved for a little while there. The rain stopped and the farmer was asked to turn off the water, and we have since been drying out. Unfortunately the combination of the water and the nice warm weather (in the low to mid 80's most days now) have been conducive to the proliferation of mosquitoes. Now when I go out to water, I'm watering my mosquitoes. Management has included getting well dressed before going out to the garden, dashing out for a couple garden chores such as harvesting and planting a couple seedlings, or just avoiding the garden altogether.



As the garden-avoidance approach has been the frequent choice, I found the first ripe pineapple tomato when it was past it's prime on the 26th of this month. I found two Purple Cherokee and two pineapple tomatoes (total weight of 3 lb.s 14 oz.!) that were ready to go on this date and I make a point of this because we have never had tomatoes ripen before October before. We've also never had tomatoes this large or this healthy. My thinking is that we got a jump on the season planting under plastic the way we did. This is also the first week that Cure has had any significant numbers of the heirloom tomatoes for the CSA, so I'm not far behind them.

We harvested our first fingerling potatoes (maybe a pound) this week and they were delicious! These were our first potatoes and the seed potatoes came from Cure Farm.

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